Jane Malinoff-Kamide Collection on Afro-Brazil

Dr. Jane Malinoff-Kamide was a scholar who specialized in Afro-Brazilian literature, history, and culture. She earned her B.A., majoring in languages (Portuguese, French) and the social sciences, at the University of Florida in 1963. She went on to earn an M.A. in French Literature at Texas Tech University before deciding to concentrate her focus on Portuguese language and Brazilian Studies at Harvard University. In 1976 she was awarded her doctorate there in Romance Languages and Literatures with her thesis title being "From Anguish to Affirmation: A Study of Afro-Brazilian Poetry."

In 1977 Dr. Malinoff-Kamide took a position as Assistant Professor of Portuguese in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, and during her three years teaching there, she set up a Latin American Studies Certificate Program for undergraduates and served as its coordinator. After receiving two traveling fellowships, she returned to her Alma Mater and was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in residence at the University of Florida's Center for Latin American Studies between June--December, 1980. In early 1981 she took up residence in Brazil and often travelled from Londrina, Parana to other major cities in the country while conducting her research. Two years into her stay in Brazil she took a position as an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and Literatures in State University of Londrina, Parana. In 1985, Dr. Malinoff-Kamide returned with her family to the U.S. and eventually relocated to the Washington, D.C. area where she took a position with the State Department's Foreign Service Institute (FSI). Initially she managed the Portuguese Language Section but after the disintegration of the old Soviet Union, she was called on to make her skills "generic" and she eventually started up and managed more than 13 different languages over 9 years. In the year 2000, it was time for a change, and Dr. Malinoff-Kamide, left the FSI Language School and went back to an earlier love, Latin America Studies.

For most of the next 10 years she managed FSI's Western Hemisphere Area Studies, which entailed overseeing the work of the experts for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, Haiti, the Andean region, the Southern Cone, and Canada. She taught the course on Brazil until she retired in August 2011.

Dr. Malinoff-Kamide received more than five awards for meritorious service from the Department of State including three Meritorious Honors Awards, and one Superior Honor Award. She received multiple academic awards during her career, including a Tinker Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship, an AAUW Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship, and a Harvard Graduate Prize Fellowship. She received a Phi Kappa Phi Prize Scholarship and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. Dr. Jane Malinoff-Kamide wrote a considerable number of academic articles and participated in over twenty conferences throughout her career.