I am an Associate Professor of Brazilian Cultural Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans. As a writer and researcher, I'm interested in culture and human rights in contemporary Brazil. I also teach undergraduate and graduate courses on a range of topics, including contemporary cinema, the globalization of Brazilian literature, and the role of soccer in national culture.
My book Memory's Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil is the first in English to probe how memories of the country's brutal military dictatorship formed and changed in the decades leading up to the inauguration of the National Truth Commission in 2012 under President Dilma Rousseff. Winner of the 2014 Alfred B. Thomas Award for best book on a Latin American subject, it was published by the University of Wisconsin Press as part of the Critical Human Rights series. Memory's Turn is cited multiple times in the final report of the São Paulo State Truth Commission. I've also written extensively about how Brazilians have preserved and learned from the memories of dictatorship in articles, essays, and on my blog, Transitional Justice in Brazil. Currently I'm working on a book that tells the story of the National Truth Commission; I gave this radio interview to the BBC on the subject. For an overview in Portuguese of my research, see this interview with Itaú Cultural. |