We are pleased to announce a conversation between Pedro Meira Monteiro (Princeton University) and Leila Lehnen (Brown University). This event will be moderated by Profs. Mauricio Acuña and Ingrid Brioso Rieumont, from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
The dialogue will address critical issues emerging at the intersection of literature and ancestral knowledge within the framework of contemporary theoretical debates in Brazilian Studies. Centering on Um rio sem fim by Afro-Indigenous author Verenilde Pereira—a recently republished novel—this discussion examines how contemporary Brazilian literature engages with Afro-Indigenous epistemologies to formulate a contra-colonial ethics and aesthetics. Informed by Afro-Indigenous knowledges and storytelling, Um rio sem fim weaves a refracted counter-colonial narrative that brings to the surface submerged perspectives in the Amazonian extractive zone (Gómez-Barris 2018).
Convened during the week preceding the United Nations Climate Conference in Brazil (COP 30, November 10–21), this conversation emphasizes Afro-Indigenous perspectives in recent literary and artistic works, contributing significantly to ongoing scholarly efforts to reconsider pluriversal modes of being in the world and to foreground diverse, often underrepresented, modes of knowledge.
This event will enhance the intellectual life of our campus community, fostering rich interdisciplinary dialogue across the fields of literature, critical theory, environmental studies, critical race theory, government, and Indigenous studies.
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Pedro Meira Monteiro is Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University, where he chairs the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and is affiliated with the Program in Latin American Studies and the Brazil LAB. He is the author, among other books, of The Other Roots (2017), Nós somos muitas (2022, in collaboration with Arto Lindsay, Flora Thomson-DeVeaux and Rogério Barbosa) and Modernismos em transe (2023). With Lilia Schwarcz, he edited the critical edition of Raízes do Brasil (2016) and the volume Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Essencial (2023). With Jaime Lauriano and Lilia Schwarcz, he curated the major exhibit "Contramemória" at the Municipal Theater of São Paulo in 2022. He curated various activities at FLUP in 2022 and 2023, and was a cocurator of Flip (Paraty International Literary Festival) in 2021 and 2022. Professor Meira Monteiro's recent work explores the relationships between literature, plant life, and post-humanist thought, as reflected in his Princeton seminar "Environmental Literature: Thinking Through Plants."
Leila Lehnen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University. Her research spans contemporary Brazilian and Latin American literature with thematic focuses including ecocriticism, social justice, and democratic representation She is the author of Citizenship and Crisis in Contemporary Brazilian Literature, which explores how modern Brazilian literary works grapple with differentiated notions of citizenship amid political and social upheaval. Additionally, Professor Lehnen's notable contributions to the environmental humanities include her article "Ecocriticism in Brazil: The Wastelands of Ana Paula Maia's Fictions", published in Romance Quarterly (2020), which examines Brazilian literature's portrayal of ecological degradation and human–nonhuman relationships under extractivist capitalism. Her broader scholarly activity includes numerous articles on citizenship, human rights, memory, and environmental justice in esteemed journals such as Journal of Lusophone Studies, Veredas, Revista Iberoamericana, Chasqui, and others.