João G. L. Viana

João G. L. Viana

Ph.D. Student in Iberian & Latin American Cultures, admitted Autumn 2021
2019: M.A., Literary Theory and Criticism, State University of Campinas, Unicamp
2014: B.A., Portuguese Language and Literatures, State University of Campinas, Unicamp

I'm a third-year Ph.D. candidate working mainly on Latin American and Luso-Brazilian Literature and anthropodecentric theory.

I am also a Graduate Student Coordinator at Materia, a DLCL Research Unit on Latin Americanist and comparative post-anthropocentrisms.

My Ph. D. project currently aims to situate convergencies in the Ibero-Atlantic literatures of "plant drugs", or plant-derived psychoactive commodities such as alcohol, coffee, sugar, cannabis, opioids, coca(ine), and tobacco, in the late-19th and 20th centuries. Following transnational parallels between intellectual currents and aesthetic trends, it seeks to understand how these formerly exoticized products imposed their presence in the Ibero-American agora, becoming vehicles of creative sensory exploration and an ambiguous site of dispute in struggles for freedom of speech.

 

Contact

Research Unit Groups

Research Interests

  • Anthropology

     

  • Contemporary Literature

     

  • Humanism

     

  • Intellectual History

     

  • Language and Society

     

  • Language Theory

     

  • Literary and Cultural Theory

     

  • Luso-Brazilian Languages, Literatures & Cultures

     

  • Medical Humanities

     

  • Modernism

     

  • Philosophy and Literature

     

  • Political History, Theory & Culture

     

  • Sociological Approaches to Literature

     

  • Spanish Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

     

  • Speculative Fiction

     

  • Surrealism

     

  • Transatlantic Studies