The text shares an experience in which letters were used as one of the means for collecting information for an investigation. The period of investigation went from 1996 to 1997 and involved 16 letters sent by the researcher and 13 letters received in response from the research subjects. Letters, missives or epistles are a resource rarely used in research, though some studies report that lately their use has been growing. The letters collected in this study reflected a crisscrossing of reader-professor histories, as they were sometimes similar and sometimes different, in the natural movement of histories that were also underscored by other voices and by different times, spaces and transposed pathways. The use of letters showed itself to be a generator of links of enchantments, of the crisscrossing of affective and cultural relationships between the investigator and the professors and a self-education alternative.
correspondence; teaching; education; research methodology