Our research strengths lie in the literary and cultural study of Portugal, Brazil, and Lusophone Africa. Faculty focus on areas such as nineteenth‑century Portuguese and Brazilian literature, film and cultural memory, women writers and gender studies, transatlantic perspectives, and contemporary Portuguese and Brazilian authors. The program also supports work in Latin American narrative and in Luso‑Brazilian literature viewed within a global context.

Our doctoral students pursue a wide range of research topics across the Lusophone world and Latin America. Recent dissertation projects address:

• Afro‑Brazilian literature and Black feminist studies
• Indigenous literatures
• Tropical eroticism and national identity
• Experimental Lusophone and Hispanic theater and performance, including studies of space and audience
• Fernando Pessoa and Portuguese literary studies
• Children’s literature and censorship under dictatorships
• Photography, memory, and post‑dictatorship
• Favela aesthetics in literature and film
• Afro‑descendant voices in Brazilian and Portuguese literature and cinema
• Mass culture in contemporary fiction