Leonora Souza Paula
paulaleo@msu.edu
517-884-4458
C706 Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
FacultyEnglishGlobal Studies in Arts and Humanities
Assistant Professor
Literary Studies; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Race and Ethnic Studies; Global and Diasporic Studies
Biography
Leonora holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California San Diego (UCSD), an M.A. in Literary Studies from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). She specializes in Literary and Cultural Studies, with a focus on intersections of race, gender and spatial representations in contemporary Afro-Brazilian and Latin American literature and culture. Her current research examines the role of Black women writers and spatially segregated artists in transforming representations of urban life in 21st century Brazil.
She is the founding co-director of the Sister Circle Mentoring Program for Women of Color and is an alum of the Human Rights Center Fellowship at the University of California Berkeley School of Law and of the American Council of Learned Societies. Leonora is the co-organizer of the 1st Black Brazilian Women Intellectuals International Conference: Quilombo as Global Black Solidarity in the Past, Present and Future and is a coordinator at the Kilomba Collective of Black Brazilian Women.
Publications
“Um gesto de afronta.” Afterword in Quantas Tantas. Mel Adún. 2021
“Afro-Ancestralidade and the Construction of Urban Memory in Conceição Evaristo’s Becos da Memória.” Brasil/Brazil Journal of Brazilian Literature. N. 63, Vol. 33, p.194-210. 2020
“Pixação and the Production of Spatial Justice by the Urban Excluded.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies. Vol. 22, p. 151-163. 2018
“Pixação in São Paulo: Subverting the Lettered City.” In: Tambling J. (ed.) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2018