O transnacional e o local nas revistas Reader's Digest e Seleções

This thesis analyzes two variety magazines, the North American Reader's Digest and the Brazilian Seleções do Reader's Digest, among the years of 1939 and 1971. Both magazines were based on the selection and condensed reproduction of articles published in other printed periodicals. The publications make up important sources of research for the perception of transnational elements between the two countries, that is, what was chosen as possible to be reproduced in each of the nations, circulating themes in different ways, depending mainly on local contexts. The purpose of the analysis focuses on the gender relations and representations that circulated between the United States and Brazil, focusing on the way women are presented and mobilized in different situations, paying attention to the way in which the magazines, taking into account local perspectives, were able to dialogue and propose specific roles in different social and political contexts. The research also seeks to understand the diffusion of a discourse based on the understanding of a "universal middle class", considering the way these magazines presented topics for instance family, birth control and political participation as guiding elements to achieve such propagation. Finally, it intends to point out how subalternized groups and of contestation, such as the movements for Civil Rights and women, were negatively presented in the pages of the periodicals, while they reinforced types considered behavioral by their editors.