HUM Grant researcher Elliana Shillig uncovers the lost work of a Portuguese activist.
In a library in Lisbon, Portugal, the work of Ana de Castro Osório sits tucked away in a neat, little box. Despite the impact that her feminist prose had on Portugal during her lifetime, the contents of this box cannot be found anywhere else—not even online. Student researcher Elliana Shillig (Portuguese ’24) first heard of Ana de Castro Osório, an early 20th-century feminist, in a class at BYU that highlighted notable Portuguese women. Inspired by what little information was available about Osório’s life and work, Shillig got to work trying to find a way to share Osório’s story and writings with people today. She applied for and received a HUM Grant, which has allowed her to examine the life of Ana de Castro Osório and taught her the importance of learning from feminists of the past in order to help women now.
Shillig’s research began in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (The National Library of Portugal), where many of Osório’s personal diary entries, manuscripts, and other notable documents sat in a box labeled Box 13: Feminism. Thanks to her HUM Grant, Shillig could make the trip as well as pay for digitized versions of the documents. After looking through the contents of the box that was filled to the brim with commissions for social change, she says, “I don’t think Osório ever stopped writing.”
After hours of annotating and consolidating the most important aspects of Osório’s life for her research paper, Shillig considers it a shame that Osório doesn’t have much acclaim for her work in Portugal. She says, “She is known but not as well as a lot of male authors, which is very common.” Just like many different female public figures in the US, a Portuguese citizen might recognize the name but not have any idea why her life was significant.
It's not feminism, it's humanism. Women are humans first.
Shillig argues that Osório’s name being lost to history seems ironic considering what she stood for: the recognition and humanity of women. Shillig says, “She talks about how it’s not feminism; it’s humanism. Women are humans first.” Osório fought for equality in all aspects of a woman’s life, including at work, in the home, and especially in education. She wrote many books to help women teach themselves and their children at home since there were not many opportunities for them to gain a formal education. Shillig says that Osório also had a small role as a government worker and helped to “put laws in place to help women maintain rights after divorce.”
As well as working to provide accessible education, Osório banded together with other minorities to grow support for any and all civil rights movements in Portugal. Shillig argues that these practices paved the way for the future of feminism in Portuguese-speaking countries—even if many women don’t remember her today.
So, how does learning about a forgotten, Portuguese feminist help advance women’s rights today? Shillig says that it allows women to appreciate all of the work that was put into the rights that they now enjoy, and it also casts a light onto countries where those rights may not yet be enjoyed. Shillig explains that many different Portuguese-speaking countries, especially those near and on the African Continent (like Moçambique, Angola, and Cape Verde), still have progress to be made in this sphere. As she worked on her project, she found that learning about the tactics that Osório used helped her understand how progress could be made in other countries.
Shillig has taken the forgotten information she found on Osório and written a research paper that she will present at the American Portuguese Science Association (APSA) at Brown University in October. She plans to keep Osório at the center of her research when she begins grad school in the next couple of months. Shillig thinks that Osório’s example of accessible education and her support of other minorities will help those still struggling to have their voice heard. Shillig says, “I started this research project because I want to focus on feminism in other countries and how they all connect—I want to see what women put into practice to get their rights. It’s important to look at a model of how it was done so that change can happen in other places.” She also hopes that this project will begin to improve Osório’s notoriety as a scholar and feminist, and that one day, her accomplishments will no longer only exist in Box 13.