Research & Publications

Researcher | Educator | Community Builder

I am Assistant Professor of Portuguese at Utah State University. I have a Ph.D. in Portuguese with a minor in Second Language Pedagogies from Indiana University. I also have an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Literary Studies from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. Below is list of my research experiences and publications about Luso-Afro-Brazilian literatures and cultures, comparative literature, photography, South American military dictatorships, war literature, and women’s writing. On the pedagogical side, my research and publications address instructed second language acquisition, task-based language teaching, and Portuguese for Specific Purposes.

Book Chapters

To Take a Picture: Photography, Representation, and Resistance in Alexandra McNichols-Torroledo’s Documental Project with the Mura Indigenous People in the Brazilian Amazon. (Accepted)

The Amazon River Basin: Extractivism, Indigenous Perspectives and an Aesthetics of Resistance.

Edited by: Patricia Vieira.

Escrever-se: literatura e identidade em Lendo Lolita em Teerã, de Azar Nafisi. (2020)

Mulheres e guerras: Participações femininas em conflitos armados através de textos contemporâneos, pp. 187-195, Editora PUC Minas.

Edited by: Terezinha Taborda Moreira, Volker Jaeckel, and Denise Borille de Abreu.

Gender and beyond: Mapping War and Subjectivity in Miriam Katin’s We Are on Our Own. (2018)

Memórias da II Guerra Mundial: Imagens, Testemunhos e Ficções, pp. 123-139, Jaguatirica.

Edited by: Elcio Cornelsen, and Volker Jaeckel.

Articles in Peer-reviewed Journals

Entre maridos e gênios: o adultério e a voz de Ana Plácido e Anna Emília Ribeiro. 

Journal of Lusophone Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2024, pp. 110-133.

Let’s Talk Tasks: A Conversation between Task-Based Researchers, Language Teachers, and Teacher Trainers. 

TASK: Journal on Task-Based Language Teaching and Learning, vol. 3, no. 1, 2023, pp. 191-208.

Coauthors: Gurzynski-Weiss, Laura, and Ana Flávia Boeing Marcelino.

‘Espejo y explosión’: Photography, Spectrality, and Extrapolation in Roberto Bolaño’s Estrella distante. (2022)

Spanish and Portuguese Review, vol. 8, pp. 31-43.

A Task-Based Needs Analysis of University-Level Portuguese for Business. (2022)

Hispania, vol. 105, no. 3, pp. 401-422.

A Disruption of the National Identity in the Brazilian-American Novel Samba Dreamers. (2021)

O Eixo e a Roda, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 144-157.

Revisiting World War I in Contemporaneity: The Myth of the War and the Game Battlefield 1. (2019)

Aletria, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 13-28.

Coauthors: Burns, Thomas.

Writing in No-man’s Land: Women, War, and Literature. (2017)

Em Tese, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 41-58.

Conference Presentations

Mapping the Spaces, Actions, and Relations of the Characters in O peso do pássaro morto. (April, 2024)

Initiative for Digital Arts & Humanities Spring Symposium
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Digital Photography, Cultural Amnesia, and the Ruins of Memory. (January, 2024)

2024 Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

From target to pedagogic tasks: bridging needs analysis and teaching via anticipated and perceived difficulty. (June, 2023)

10th International Conference on Task-Based Language Teaching
Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand

Watch the presentation

From task-based needs analysis to pedagogic task design in a Portuguese for Business course: a pilot study on anticipated and perceived task difficulty. (April, 2023)

26th Annual Conference of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages
Chicago, Illinois

Retratos e retratações: imagens literárias de mulheres nas ditaduras de Brasil e Portugal. (April, 2023)

76th Kentucky Foreign Language Conference
University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky

‘Nesse tempo eternamente presente’: A Photo Essay on Disputed Sites of Memory of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. (February, 2023)

Diálogos: The 20th Annual Graduate Student Conference of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

‘Um corpo que sobra’: Traces of Missing Women and the Post-Memory of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. (October, 2022)

12th International Conference of the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA)
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

Entre maridos e gênios: o adultério e a voz de Ana Plácido e Anna Emília Ribeiro na literatura lusófona. (March, 2022)

Diálogos: The 19th Annual Graduate Student Conference of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

A Task-Based Needs Analysis of Portuguese for Business at College Level. (June, 2021)

103rd American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) Annual Conference
Atlanta, Georgia

Quotation Marks: Writing, Photography, and the Instability of Post-Memory. (February, 2021)

Diálogos: The 18th Annual Graduate Student Conference of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Photography and Collective (Post) Memory of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in Contemporary Literature. (February, 2020)

Diálogos: The 17th Annual Graduate Student Conference of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Ekphrasis, Photograph, and Collective (Post) Memory in Julián Fuks’s A resistência. (February, 2020)

6th Crossroads: Annual Graduate Student Conference
University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia

Refugee and Collapse of Borders in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West. (June, 2019)

4th National Conference of the Group for the Study of War and Literature and 2nd National Conference of the Group for the Study of Science Fiction and Utopias: Imagined Wars
Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Rereading World War I in Contemporaneity: The Myth of the War in the Game Battlefield 1. (November, 2018)

3rd National Conference of the Group for the Study of War and Literature
Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

The Upside-downness of the World: Geographic Hybridity, Cultural Conflicts, and Mobile Women in Shani Mootoo’s ‘The Upside-downness of the World as It Unfolds’. (August, 2017)

15th International Congress of ABRALIC
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Imagining War: Gender, Authority, and Experience in Edith Wharton’s ‘Writing a War Story’ and Tim O’Brien’s ‘How to Tell a True War Story’. (July, 2017)

13th International Women’s Worlds
Florianopolis, Brazil

Transgressing Gender and Geographic Borders in Women’s Literature. (October, 2016)

South American International Conference: Territorialities and Humanities
Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism, and National Space in the Literature of War Written by Women. (October, 2014)

23rd Week of Scientific Research of the Federal University of Minas Gerais
Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Research Experience

Research Assistant (Spring 2022)

Indiana University Bloomington


Assistant to Professor Anke Birkenmaier (Department of Spanish and Portuguese) in research projects about Latin American and Caribbean literature, culture, and thought.

Research Assistant (Summer 2021)

Indiana University Bloomington


Hourly assistant to Professor Laura Gurzynski-Weiss (Department of Spanish and Portuguese) in the research project “Emerging bilingualism in elementary-level exposure-track Spanish: A collaborative partnership between Indiana University Bloomington, Monroe County Community School Corporation, and Huntingburg Elementary School.”

Principal Investigator (Spring 2021)

Indiana University Bloomington


Independent study research experience: development and implementation of a task-based needs analysis for the reconfiguration and reimplementation of a Portuguese for Business course at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Indiana University Bloomington. Supervised by Professor Laura Gurzynski-Weiss. Funded by the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER).

Research Assistant (2014-2015)

Federal University of Minas Gerais


Assistant to Professor Sandra Regina Goulart Almeida (School of Letters) in research projects about women’s writings, funded by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq).

Other Publications

Portuguese for Doing Business in Brazil: A Task-Based, Language for Specific Purposes Course. (2022)

Incorporating Business Concepts in World Languages Instruction: Sample Lesson Plans, NALRC Press.

Edited by: National African Language Resource Center (NALRC) at Indiana University Bloomington


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1918 Now: The myth of WWI in Battlefield 1. (2018)

Work in Progress: Newsletter de Jovens Investigadores em Estudos Anglo-Americanos em Portugal JRAAS/CETAPS, pp. 1.

Fragmented, Hybrid and Migratory Subjectivities in Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. (2017)

Revista Mulheres e Literatura, vol. 19.

Imaginando a Guerra: Gênero, Autoridade e Experiência em ‘Writing a War Story,’ de Edith Wharton, e ‘How to Tell a True War Story,’ de Tim O’Brien. (2017)

Anais do XI Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero, pp. 1-12, UFSC Press.

Edited by: Jair Zandoná, Ana Maria Veiga, and Cláudia Nichnig.

Guerra e Cartografias (do Corpo): Migrações e Relações de Gênero e Etnia no Relato Autobiográfico da Guerra da Bósnia em Goodbye Sarajevo. (2017)

Anais do IX Colóquio Mulheres em Letras: Cartografias do Corpo, pp. 753-761, UFMG Press.

Edited by: Cristiane Côrtes, Juliana Borges Oliveira de Morais, and Natália Fontes de Oliveira.

Apresentação: Dossiê Literatura e Guerra: O Impacto da Primeira Guerra Mundial na Produção Cultural. (2016)

Literatura e Autoritarismo, vol. 17, pp. 1-2.