Our Faculty

Background

Luiza Franco Moreira, professor of Comparative Literature and chair of the department, joined the Binghamton faculty as Associate Professor in 2001; she previously held the position of Assistant Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian literature at U.C. Berkeley (1992-1995) and Princeton (1995-2001). She did her graduate work in Comparative Literature at Cornell, graduating in 1992. 

Moreira recently organized a collection of essays on world literature, Premises and Problems (SUNY Press, 2021). This volume is a result of her years at Binghamton, both of her engagement with an international community of colleagues and graduate students, and of her service as an administrator in the department. The chapter she contributed to this anthology, "Selective Invisibility: Elizabeth Bishop, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and World Literature," approaches twentieth-century Brazilian poetry in the broader context of the literature of the Americas. 

In the past twenty years, the main concern of her scholarship has been to develop perspectives that allow Brazilian literature to be considered in relation to multiple literary and historical contexts. Her monograph, Meninos, Poetas e Heróis: Aspectos de Cassiano Ricardo do Modernismo ao Estado Novo (EDUSP, 2001), explores the poetry, prose, and journalism of a fascist-leaning Modernist who held a prominent position during the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship (1937-1944). Moreira's current project considers mid-twentieth-century Brazilian poetry in the context of its initial publication in the press. Even though it was tightly censored, the press of the Vargas years provides a space in which literary writers articulate dissident political positions and critically engage with the state's propaganda discourse.

Recently taught seminars and courses include: World Literature and Hegemony; World Literature II (Composition); Narratives North and South (General Interdependencies)

Education

• PhD, MA, Cornell University
• MA, BA, University of São Paulo

Research Interests

• World literature
• Brazilian literature
• Literature of the Americas
• Literature and history