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Thayse Leal Lima

Profile Photo of Thayse Lima

Associate Professor, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Associate Professor and Advisor, Spanish and Portuguese
Affiliate Faculty, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center
Faculty Fellow for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, College of Arts and Humanities

2210 Jiménez Hall
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Education

Ph.D., , Brown University

Research Expertise

Brazil
Latin America
Transnational Studies

Curriculum Vitae

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.

Publications

Latino Americanizando o Brasil: A crítica Literária e o Diálogo Transnacional

This work explores the integration of Brazil within the Latin American cultural and literary paradigm of the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures | Spanish and Portuguese

Author/Lead: Thayse Leal Lima
Dates:
thumbnail book of latino-americanizando o brasil

This work explores the integration of Brazil within the Latin American cultural and literary paradigm of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The project centers on the intellectual work of Antonio Candido, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal e Haroldo de Campos.

Translation and World Literature: The Perspective of the ‘Ex-Centric’

Argues that De Campos’s translation theory of “Trancreation” subverted the hierarchical categories and values that have structured the field of world literature

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Thayse Leal Lima
Dates:
In this article I demonstrate that De Campos’s translation theory of “Trancreation” subverted the hierarchical categories and values that have structured the field of world literature. Positioning himself as an intellectual from an ‘ex-centric’ literaryculture, situated outside of the centers of global circulation, De Campos critiqued the unequal weight usually assigned to translated and original texts, author and translator, established and ascending traditions. I argue that De Campos’s response to the standing inequality that characterizes translational exchanges involved a literary solution. As a creative act in its own right, the theory of transcreation offered an aesthetic answer to the problems of authenticity, influence and literary dependence.

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, no. 26, 2017, pp. 461-481

Read More about Translation and World Literature: The Perspective of the ‘Ex-Centric’

South-South Exchanges: Biblioteca Ayacucho and Construction of a Transnational Literature

Addresses circulation and exchange in the Global South by examining the case of Biblioteca Ayacucho (1973), a transnational collection of over 500 books from several Latin American countries.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Thayse Leal Lima
Dates:
The article addresses circulation and exchange in the Global South by examining the case of Biblioteca Ayacucho (1973), a transnational collection of over 500 books from several Latin American countries. It discusses Ayacucho’ strategies of transnationalization which, in addition to book publishing, also relied on networks of intellectual collaboration and exchange. By engaging Latin American specialists and relying on local scholarship, Ayacucho offered an inclusive model of world literature that allies both distant and close reading in the construction of a transnational literature. As such, it defied established assumptions about literary circulation and center-based conceptions of world literature.

DOI: 10.1163/24056480-20210001

Read More about South-South Exchanges: Biblioteca Ayacucho and Construction of a Transnational Literature

Latin American Dialogues during the Cold War: The magazines Cadernos Brasileiros and Mundo Nuevo

Examines the relationship between the magazines Cadernos Brasileiros (1959 - 1970) and Mundo Nuevo (1967 - 1971) in the 1960s and 70s

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Thayse Leal Lima
Dates:

This article examines the relationship between the magazines Cadernos Brasileiros (1959 - 1970) and Mundo Nuevo (1967 - 1971) in the 1960s and 70s. It problematizes the processes of South-South exchange by examining the triangulation of Brazilian and Hispanic American cultural relations, which in the case studied, relied on material and logistical support of the United States. If on the one hand the support of the United states undermined the credibility of Latin American cultural magazines, on the other hand, it also opened opportunities for editors, cultural producers, and writers to advance their own agenda of literary internationalization and the cultural integration of Latin America.

Thinking World Literature from Lusophone Perspectives, special issue of Journal of Lusophone Studies, 2021. (accepted)

Latino-Americanizando o Brasil:A Crítica Literária e o Diálogo Transnacional [Latin Americanizing Brazil: Literary Critics and the Transnational Dialogue]

Examines the dialogues and exchanges between Brazilian and Hispanic American literary critics from the 1960s to the 1980s and their efforts to integrate Brazil in the Latin American paradigm.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Thayse Leal Lima
The book Latino-Americanizando o Brasil: A Crítica Literária e o Diálogo Transnacional focuses on the dialogues and exchanges between Brazilian and Hispanic American literary critics from the 1960s to the 1980s and their efforts to integrate Brazil in the Latin American paradigm. It shows how these engagements helped to rethink national and transnational cultural constructs producing a revision of the Hispanic-centered definition of Latin American literature and a shift in the Brazilian literary and cultural theory from a nationally based perspective to a transnational one. Moreover, Thayse Lima connects the efforts of regional integration to the process of internationalization of Latin American literature in the phenomenon known as the “Boom”. In the intellectual field, she argues, integration was also related to a desire to influence the regime of international circulation, which largely happened in the centre-periphery axis. Latin Americanist critics helped to shape a unified view of the continent’s cultural production, while also creating opportunities for the promotion and circulation of Latin American literature within the region. In addition to contributing to a greater understanding of the complex history of Brazil's insertion in Latin America, the book also sheds light on the strategies used by marginalized intellectual traditions to negotiate and imagine their place in a global sphere.

Barcelona: Anthropos, 1994. 463 p. ISBN 84-7658-438-5

Related Events

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Salgado Maranhão: Brazilian Poet and Songwriter

A reading and a conversation with acclaimed poet and songwriter Salgado Maranhão about the politics of writing, translation, and resistance in contemporary Brazil.
book cover thayse leal lima

Book Presentation: Latin Americanizing Brazil: Literary Criticism and the Transnational Dialogue

Book presentation in conversation with Vivaldo dos Santos, Associate professor of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese of Georgetown University.