Dr Emanuelle Santos BA, MA PhD

Dr Emanuelle Santos

Department of Modern Languages
Senior Lecturer in Modern Languages

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0) 121 414 5504
Email
e.santos@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
Ashley Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

I am a Senior Lecturer in Modern Languages at the Department of Modern Languages, where I also coordinate the Portuguese Studies programme and the Instituto Camões’ Cátedra Gil Vicente. 

My research focuses on the intersections between the cultures of the Portuguese-speaking world, postcolonial studies, and theories of world literature, drawing attention to the global-local dialectics in epistemology and literary and critical theory. My work also addresses representations of race, gender and sexuality, memory studies, world-systems theory, and decolonial critique especially with regards to structures of inequality, oppression and hegemony. 

Qualifications

  • PhD in English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick,  UK
  • MA in Estudos Comparados de Literaturas de Língua Portuguesa, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
  • BA em Letras Português e Inglês , Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

Biography

Upon the completion of my BA in Portuguese and English Language and Literatures at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil (2009), I joined the MA programme of Comparative Studies of Literatures in Portuguese at the same institution where I graduated with the dissertation titled: ‘Estórias da subjetividade pós-moderna: configurações identitárias na prosa de ficção de João Melo’ (2010). After moving to the Netherlands to undertake my doctoral degree at the University of Utrecht, I was offered the possibility to continue my research at the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK, where I graduated with the thesis ‘Late Postcoloniality: State, Violence and Wealth in the early 21st century Literatures Portuguese-speaking Africa’ (2016).

Before joining the University of Birmingham, I held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Warwick and taught at the undergraduate programme of English and Comparative Literary Studies in the same institution. My teaching experience also includes years of Portuguese and English tuition to pupils in Brazil.

Teaching

I have a broad teaching experience including language, literature, literary and critical theory, and the intersection between these domains. I currently coordinate the academic programme in Portuguese Studies at Birmingham, and next to my work at undergraduate level I also contribute to MA courses. Modules in which I lecture and/or convene include:

  • Portuguese Core I and II
  • Intermediate Portuguese Language
  • Advanced Portuguese Language and Translation
  • The Cultural `Melting Pot': Contemporary Lusophone Identities
  • Representations of Love, Desire and Sexuality in the Lusophone World
  • World Literature and Film II

Postgraduate supervision

I welcome applications of postgraduate students working in many aspects of the Portuguese-speaking world and critical theory, including comparative studies involving other languages and cultures, and am open to co-supervision. My areas of interest include:

  • Cultures and intellectual histories of the Portuguese-speaking world (including national, transnational, and comparative approaches)
  • Brazilian cultures
  • Postcolonial studies
  • World literature theories and pedagogies
  • Postcolonial memory
  • The history and aesthetics of the novel
  • Diasporas of the Portuguese-speaking world
  • Gender and sexuality in the Portuguese-speaking world
  • Revolutionary thought
  • Culture and resistance 

Find out more - our PhD Hispanic Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

Through the analysis of crucial local and transnational historical, political, economic, social and aesthetical circumstances underpinning the richness inherent to the many cultures across the Portuguese-speaking world, my research critically engages with literary and critical theory arguing for the need of epistemological diversity.

My latest research project promotes a critical revision of important aspects of Postcolonial Theory such as the concept of postcoloniality based the comparative study of the contemporary prose fiction in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe. My current project investigates the critical potential of different conceptualisations of world literature for the production and circulation of works conceived in peripheral or semi-peripheral cultures. My work has also been dealing with issues of coloniality in South-South cultural exchanges, the impact of transnationalism in the production, distribution and consumption of cultural artefacts as well as with matters of cultural reification and appropriation.

Other activities

I am currently the Vice Chair of the Early-Career Researcher Development Committee of the  International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA).

Publications

Edited Volumes

  • Via Atlântica, 25 (2015). Guest co-editor with Mário Lugarinho and Paulo de Medeiros. Special issue on Atlantic Triangles.
  •  ContraCorrente: revista de estudos literários, 4 (2013). Guest co-editor with Otávio Rios. Special issue on Body and Writing.
  • P: Portuguese Cultural Studies, 4 (2012). Guest co-editor with Patricia Schor. Special issue on Brazilian Postcolonialities.

 Book Chapters

  • ‘From Lusotropicalism to Lusophony: Brasil-Angola Cultural exchanges under the sign of coloniality’ in Post/Colonialism and the Pursuit of Freedom in the Black Atlantic ed. Jerome Branche. (Routledge, in press).
  • ‘Memory Studies and the Postcolonial Condition: Notes from Portuguese-speaking Africa’ in Memory and Postcolonial Studies: Synergies and New Directions, ed. Dirk Göttsche. (Palgrave Macmillan, in press).
  • ‘Queer Identities at the Margins of Literature in Portuguese-speaking Africa’ in Beyond Binaries: Sex, Sexualities and Gender in the Lusophone World, ed. Ana Raquel Fernandes and Paulo Pepe. (Peter Lang, in press)
  • ‘Depois do Nacionalismo: Configurações Literárias de Pós-colonialidades Contemporâneas em Cabo Verde, Guiné Bissau e São Tomé e Príncipe’ in Narrativas Escritas e Visuais da Nação Pós-Colonial  - Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau e São Tomé e Princípe ed. Ana Mafalda Leite. (Edições Colibri, in press)
  • ‘Guia prático para (des)construção de comunidades imaginadas: A crítica pós-colonial a partir do pensamento de fronteira em “Campo de Trânsito” de João Paulo Borges Coelho’. Visitas a João Paulo Borges Coelho. Leituras, Diálogos e Futuros, ed. by Isabel Ferreira Gould, Leonor Simas Almeida, Sandra Sousa and Sheila Khan. (Lisbon: Colibri, 2017), p.79-90.
  • ‘Entre Prósperos e Calibans: O pós-colonial e a pós-metrópole em “Irene ou o Contrato Socia”’, de Maria Velho da Costa’, in Entre dois fins de século: Estudos de literatura portuguesa, ed. by Otávio Rios and Verônica Prudente. (Campinas: Mercado das Letras, 2015), p.71-85.
  • ‘O Perigo de Uma História Única nas Literaturas Africanas em Língua Portuguesa’, in Colonial/Post-Colonial: Writing as Memory in Literature, ed. by Inocência Mata (Lisbon: Edições Colibri, 2013), p. 33-41.

Interviews

  • ‘Postcolonial Theory Meets the Portuguese-Speaking World: An Interview with Robert J. C. Young’, Ellipsis, 11 (2013), p. 293-315.
  • ‘Brasil, estudos pós-coloniais e contracorrentes análogas: entrevista com Ella Shohat e Robert Stam’. Revista de Estudos Feministas, 21-2 (2013), p. 701-726.
  • ‘Interview with Ella Shohat and Robert Stam: “Brazil is not Traveling Enough”: On Postcolonial Theory and Analogous Counter-Currents’, P: Portuguese Cultural Studies, 4 (2012), p. 13-40

 Book Reviews

  • ‘No cruzamento entre a pós-colonialidade e a globalização’, Via Atlântica, 20 (2011), p. 217-220.
  • ‘Filhos da Pátria, de João Melo’, Revista Crioula, 5 (2009)

Dissemination of Research and Participation in Academic Events

Invited Lectures and Presentations

  • September 2017: Centre for Transnational Studies, University of Southampton, UK: Lecture Title: ‘On Cultural Transnationalisms: The case of World (-) literatures in Portuguese’
  • February 2016 and 2017: Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK. Lecture on Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star.
  • November 2015: Post/Colonialism and the Pursuit of Freedom Colloquium, University of Pittsburgh, USA. Presentation title: ‘From Lusotropicalism to Lusophony: Brasil-Angola Cultural exchanges under the sign of coloniality’.
  • November 2015: Congresso Internacional da Associação Brasileira de Professores de Literatura Portuguesa, University of the State of the Amazon (UEA), Manaus, Brazil. Mini PGT-level course (4 hours long) titled ‘Postcolonial Studies in the Portuguese-speaking World’.
  • March 2015: Trans-Oceanic Studies in Dialogue: Crossings, Currents, Convergences Colloquium, University of Nottingham, UK. Presentation title: ‘The World, the Label and the Critic: Meditations on the Perishability of Transnational Critical Paradigms’.
  • March 2013: International Consortium for the Study of Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Reconciliation, ‘Re-Gendering and (De)Queering Post-conflict Societies’. The University of Nottingham, UK. Presentation title: ‘Intra-Colonial Practices of Post-Colonial Times: Gender Relations in Contemporary Portuguese-Speaking Africa’.

Conference Papers

  • 2016: Annual Conference of the Association of Women in Spanish and Portuguese Studies (WISPS), University of Stirling, UK. Presentation title: “World (-) Literature and the Future of Comparative Literary Studies in the Portuguese Speaking World”.
  • 2016: 21st World Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, University of Vienna, AT. Presentation Title: “Between Lusophony and World Literature: Challenging Comparative Approaches to the Literatures of Portuguese-Speaking Africa”.
  • 2016: Symposium Memory and Postcolonial Studies: Synergies and New Directions, the University of Nottingham, UK. Presentation title “Matters of Postcolonial Memory: The representation of Angola in José Eduardo Agualusa’s A General Theory of Oblivion”.
  • 2015: VI International Conference of the Association of British and Irish Lusitanists, University of Exeter, UK. Presentation title: “Nations after Nationalism: The Postcolonial State in the Contemporary Literatures of Portuguese-Speaking Africa”.
  • 2014: IX International Conference of the American Studies Association, University of New Mexico, USA. Presentation title: “Contemporary African Literatures Written in Portuguese: At the Border between Nation and State”.
  • 2014: Seminário do Grupo NEVIS – Narrativas Escritas e Visuais da Nação Pós-colonial. Centro de Estudos sobre África, Ásia e América Latina of the Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão/University of Lisbon, Portugal. Presentation title: “A nação a contrapelo: Vozes críticas nas literaturas contemporâneas de Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau e São Tomé e Príncipe”.
  • 2013: XIV Annual Conference of Women in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (WISPS). University of Liverpool, UK. Presentation title: “Encounters between postcolonial theory and Portuguese-speaking Africa”.
  • 2013: X Congresso Alemão de Lusitanistas. Migração e Exílio. Instituto de Românicas, University of Hamburg, Germany. Presentation title: “Reescritas pós-coloniais de memórias pós-conflito: ‘Teoria geral do esquecimento’ de José Eduardo Agualusa”.
  • 2013: Postcolonial Europe Network Conference. Postcolonial Transitions in Europe: Conflict, Transnational Justice and Cosmopolitanism. University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. Presentation title: “Postcolonial Thought on the Postcolony: the Same European Dance with its Other?”
  • 2012: Seminário Internacional Cânone, Margem e Periferia nos Espaços de Língua Portuguesa. Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal. Presentation title: “Em Busca de um outro(/)centro? O Estudo das Literaturas Africanas em Língua Portuguesa no Brasil”.
  • 2012: International Workshop at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Atlantic Triangles: Lusophone Colonial and Postcolonial Crossings. Wassenaar, the Netherlands. Presentation title: “Discovering Africa: the critique of the Literatures of Portuguese-Speaking African Countries in Brazil”.
  • 2011: XI Congresso Luso Afro Brasileiro de Ciências Sociais. Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil. Presentation title: “A lusofonia e a formação dos estados nacionais africanos de língua oficial portuguesa”.
  • 2011: ICLA Coordinating Committee for the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages (CHLEL). Re-writing/Re-memoring History in Literature through the colonial/postcolonial junction. University of Lisbon, Portugal. Presentation title: “O Perigo de Uma História Única nas Literaturas Africanas em Língua Portuguesa”.
  • 2010: American Portuguese Studies Association Seventh International Conference. Brown University, Providence, US. Presentation title: “National Identity in the Age of Identity Crisis: The Contemporary Prose Fiction Works by João Melo”.

Conference Organization:

  • September 2017: Discourses of Migration. Organized in collaboration with Prof. Paulo de Medeiros and Dr Jo Angouri, University of Warwick, United Kingdom.
  • June 2017: Peripheral Postcolonialities: Postcolonial Studies and World-Systems. Organized independly. University of Warwick, United Kingdom.
  • May 2014: Brazil Warwick Network Meeting. Organized in collaboration with Dr. Christabelle Peters (Bristol). University of Warwick, United Kingdom.
  • December 2012: Seminário Internacional Cânone, Margem e Periferia nos Espaços deLíngua Portuguesa. Organized in collaboration with Prof. Inocência Mata and Flávia Ba (Lisbon).  Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.
  • May 2012: International Workshop at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Organized in collaboration with Prof. Paulo de Medeiros and Patrícia Schor (Utrecht). Wassenaar, the Netherlands. Theme:‘Atlantic Triangles: Lusophone Colonial and Postcolonial Crossings.

View all publications in research portal