Selected Scholarship and Translations

Scholarship

**“Oliveira Silveira (1941-2009): notas sobre um guerreiro ancestral dos Cadernos Negros”**

This article examines the contributions of Afro-Brazilian poet and activist Oliveira Silveira to the literary series Cadernos Negros. By situating the pampas of southernmost Brazil as a Black geography, his work expands the Afro-Brazilian experience to contemplate its borderlands with Uruguay and Argentina.

Forthcoming in Portuguese in Cadernos Afro Memória.

**“Entre gauchos negros y próceres putos: 1810: La revolución de mayo vivida por los negros de Washington Cucurto”**

Washington Cucurto’s historical novel 1810: La revolución de mayo vivida por los negros writes Blackness and queerness into Argentine national history. In this piece, I illustrate how satire, debauchery and excess underscore Cucurto’s subversion of the racial and heteronormative order underlying the imaginary of a White Argentina.

Published in Spanish in Organon (2022).

“Black Ghosts in the Afro-Pampas: Haunting and Folklorisation in Aldo Locatelli’s ‘Negrinho do Pastoreio’ Paintings”

In this article, I examine public iconography of “Negrinho do Pastoreio,” a folktale common to the pampas of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. I explore how this state-sponsored cultural production renders Black presence as ghostly or historical, obscuring lived realities of Afro-descendant communities in the region.

Published in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (2020).

Translations

“Man or Mouse?” by José Falero

…It’s strange to look at a frightened mouse up close. There are many resemblances to our own species. A frightened mouse widens its eyes like we do. A frightened mouse gasps for breath like we do. And there he was lying on his little side, helpless, staring at me wide-eyed, breathing heavily, waiting for the worst…

A Brazilian crônica, translated from Portuguese. Forthcoming in the Journal of Lusophone Studies.

“Resisting Bolsonaro: The Mobilization of the Tupinambá of Serra do Padeiro to Defend Their Territory and Collective Projects” by Daniela Fernandes Alarcon, Glicéria Tupinambá, Jéssica Tupinambá and Sthefany Tupinambá.

…the Indigenous movement emerged as one of the main forces of resistance to Bolsonarismo. Through an analysis of the strategies developed in Serra do Padeiro, we take five key episodes as starting points: the uncovering of a targeted plan to exterminate Indigenous leaders, an attempt to build a resort on Tupinambá territory…

An ethnographic report on the Indigenous land struggle in Northeastern Brazil, translated from Portuguese. Published in Vibrant (2025).

“Notes on the Margins: A View on Black Authorship in the Literature of Rio Grande do Sul” by Liliam Ramos da Silva

…A perception exists that Gaúchos, the name given to those from the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul and epitomized in a historical figure akin to the cowboy, are white, introspective consumers of yerba mate and churrasco (barbecue); an emotionally distant bunch given the immensity of the Pampas and their chilling weather patterns….

Literary commentary on Black literature produced in Southern Brazil, translated from Portuguese. Published in Latin American Literature Today (2021).