Thomas E. Skidmore

Thomas Elliot Skidmore (22 July 1932-)

Thomas Skidmore is a noted historian and scholar specialized in Brazilian history.

Although born in Troy, Ohio, USA on 22 July 1932 he grew up in Cincinnati and succeeded in become state debator while at Wyoming High School. He graduated in political science and philosophy in 1954 from Denison University. He received a Fulbright Fellowship to study philosophy at Oxford University where he met his wife Felicity. He received a second B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1956 and a master's degree in 1959. He obtained his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1960 with a thesis on the German Chancellor Leo von Caprivi.

His attention shifted to South America after the Cuban Revolution. His Harvard post-doctorate focused on Brazil. In 1967 he published Politics in Brazil: 1930-64, An Experiment in Democracy.

In 1966, Skidmore joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After twenty years he became a full professor in 1968. In 1986, Skidmore moved to Brown University as the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Modern Latin American History and Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. For a decade he directed the Center for Latin American Studies (now the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies), and retired in 1999.

Selected bibliography

• Politics in Brazil 1930–1964: An Experiment in Democracy (Oxford University Press, 1967)
• Black Into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (Oxford University Press, 1974)
• Modern Latin America, with Peter H. Smith (Oxford University Press, multiple editions, 1984–2005)
• The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil: 1964-1985 (1988)
• Television, Politics, and the Transition to Democracy in Latin America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, ed.)
• “Bi-Racial U.S.A. vs Multi-Racial Brazil: Is the Contrast Still Valid?,” Journal of Latin American Studies 25, no. 2 (1993): 373-385
• Brazil: Five Centuries of Change (Oxford University Press, 1999)