Twentieth Century Studies

Traces and tensions: memory, identity, and power across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

Carlos Manuel Faísca, Clara Isabel Serrano — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The twenty-fifth issue of the journal Twentieth Century Studies marks a significant moment in the publication’s editorial journey, reaffirming its commitment to an interdisciplinary, critical approach that is attentive to the multiple forms of reading, representation, and contestation of the twentieth century.

Industrial Spaces in Transition

Carlos Manuel Faísca, Sandra Pereira — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines the process of adaptative reuse of the former Delphi factory, owned by the General Motors Group, in Ponte de Sor, situating it within the international principles of industrial heritage conservation. From the history of this manufacturing site, which between 1969 and 2010 significantly shaped the local economy and identity, the study places its adaptation within the broader context of deindustrialisation and present-day policies for the reuse of industrial infrastructures. Using documentary sources, testimonies from former workers, and interviews with political decision-makers, the article assesses the municipal project proposing a business and training centre, as well as a space dedicated to industrial memory and history. This project shows strong alignment with the Nizhny Tagil Charter for the Industrial Heritage, by integrating functional continuity, economic sustainability, and the preservation of identity. However, challenges such as dependence on European funding, the risk of under-occupation, and the proper safeguarding of the site's industrial memory and history may constrain the full realisation of the project, whose impact will ultimately depend on its future implementation.

Between the Lines of Medicine. Letters and the Construction of Luso-Brazilian Eugenics (1920-1930)

Daniel Florence Giesbrecht — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study analyzes unpublished correspondence between Renato Kehl, physician graduated from the Rio de Janeiro Medical School, and António Mendes Correia, physician, anthropologist and professor at the University of Porto, contributing originally to the history of medicine in the Atlantic world. Preserved in archives in Brazil and Portugal, the letters are examined as instruments of prestige, functioning as technologies of governing life, forms of scientific consecration, and mediators of transatlantic circulation. Beyond personal records, they reveal strategies of legitimation and disputes over authority within a field marked by colonial asymmetries. The exchange highlights the ambivalence of Luso-Brazilian eugenics, which combined moral counselling with covert exclusionary projects, challenging the historiographical notion of a “Latin mildness” and offering an original contribution to the historiography of medicine.

CORBANEZI, Elton Rogério. Saúde Mental, Depressão e Capitalismo. São Paulo: Editora Unesp Digital, 2021. 245 p. ISBN 978-65-5714-033-8 (E-book)

Karen Cristina Galletto — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“I think that I thought I knew, but now I don’t know”

Pedro Teixeira — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The project examines the past and present of the “Real Fábrica das Sedas e as Anexas” (1734-1833), a factory situated in the Street of Escola Politécnica, in Lisbon. Studying its History and the present, I aim to understand how the local community perceives the complex and its remnants. I contend that the factual History of the RFSA was replaced by a series of multiple micro-narratives, which have created alternative histories of the complex. I intend to prove my argument by utilizing both historiographic sources and participant observation. Combining methods derived from History and Anthropology, it is possible to observe a rift between the institution’s history, studied by academics, and the one known by the community and the Lisbon City Council. Furthermore, I conclude by exploring actions that both the population and Lisbon City Council can take to value the industrial patrimony.