Thayse Leal Lima

Dr. Thayse Leal Lima joined the Department of Spanish and Portuguese in 2015. She has been the advisor for the Portuguese Minor Program since 2021 and currently holds the position of  Faculty Fellow for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the College of Arts and Humanities. Her expertise spans various fields, encompassing nineteenth-century to contemporary Brazilian literature and culture, Modern Latin American literature, intellectual history, transnationalism, and international literary circulation. Her book Latino Americanizando o Brasil: A crítica Literária e o Diálogo Transnacional [Latin Americanizing Brazil: Literary Criticism and the Transnational Dialogue] was published by Editora UFPR (Federal University of Paraná Press) in 2021. In this work, she traces the efforts of Hispanic American and Brazilian intellectuals in the second half of the twentieth century to bring Brazil more clearly into a Latin American cultural and literary paradigm. Her book sheds new light on the intricate web of transnational exchanges, uncovering their ideological, political, and intellectual underpinning. 

Dr. Lima's current research centers on transnationalism and world literature. She has contributed to debates in the field by co-editing a special issue of the Lusophone Studies Journal titled "Thinking World Literature from Lusophone Perspectives," in addition to publishing articles in journals such as Journal of World Literature, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, amongst others. She is currently co-editing a volume tentatively titled Global Portuguese Literatures in the World. This forthcoming work emphasizes Portuguese language literatures' circulation, exchange, and imaginative world-making.