Overview  |  Research  |  Grants/Awards  |  Teaching  |  Publications

A native of Rio de Janeiro, Professor Valente was educated in Brazil and the United States. His teaching and research interests include: 1. Brazilian narrative of the 19th and 20th centuries, with special emphasis on José de Alencar, João Guimarães Rosa, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Euclides da Cunha, and Lima Barreto; 2. the relationship of fiction and history; 3. the construction of national identity and the representation of the nation; 4. comparative literature, particularly the modern historical novel and the literature of the Americas; 5. theory of literature, particularly the narrative; 6. Brazilian Poetry since 1945. Professor Valente is co-founder and Associate Editor of Brasil/Brazil: A Journal of Brazilian Literature, Consulting Editor for Latin American Literature of The Explicator, and on the editorial boards of Luso-Brazilian Review and Aletria: Revista de Estudos de Literatura. Active in a variety of professional and scholarly organizations, Professor Valente is a past President of the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA), and serves as a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL) and of the Division of Luso-Brazilian Literature of the Modern Language Association (MLA). He is a former President of the Northeastern Association of Brazilianists (NAB) and has on two separate occasions served on the Executive Committee of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA). In the summers of 1988 and 1993 he was Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Professor Valente was Chair of the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from 2003 to 2012.


Some recent publications: MUNDIVIVENCIAS: LEITURAS COMPARATIVAS DE GUIMARAES ROSA; "History, Fiction and National Identity in J. U. Ribeiro's 'An Invincible Memory' and R. Coover's 'The Public Burning'" (Latin American Studies Association/Brazil Section award for the best article on a Brazil-related topic published in a US scholarly journal in 1991); "The Refiguration of Brazil's Eighteenth Century in Romanceiro da Inconfidência"; "'Estrelas indecifráveis': ciência e literatura em Euclides da Cunha"; "Distopia e utopia nas letras brasileiras da pós-modernidade"; "Paulo Freire: desenvolvimento como prática de liberdade"; "O romance brasileiro de revisitação colonial: o caso de Luiz Antônio de Assis Brasil"; "DeLillo's Techno-Humanism"


Courses offered:

* The Brazilian Puzzle: Confronting the Post-Colonial Legacy
* Que país é este?: Twentieth-Century Definitions of Brazil and Brazilianness
* Fiction and History
* A Comparative Introduction to the Literatures of the Americas
* Tales of the Sertão
* Nation and Narration
* Modern and Contemporary Brazilian Poetry

Download Luiz Fernando Valente's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format