Bio: Before joining the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies program in 2016, Isabela completed a BA in Journalism and an MA in Media and Cultural Studies, both from the Rio de Janeiro Federal University, in Brazil. Her dissertation traces the concepts of feeling, sensibility, and sentiment in epistemologies of slavery in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Brazil and Cuba. More specifically, she is interested in the notion of feeling both as a constitutive element of enslaved subjectivities and as a material agent informing medical, legal, financial, and political practices. Other scholarly interests include philosophy of science, psychiatry, and transatlantic scientific and literary connections.
Research interests: Eighteenth- and nineteenth- century intellectual production in Brazil and Cuba; slavery; history of medicine; affect theory; cultural studies; theories of diaspora; postcolonial studies
Dissertation: Subjected to Feeling: Sensibility and Slavery in Brazil and Cuba
Recent Courses in RLL
- PORT 12200 Portuguese for Spanish Speakers (Spring 2019)
- SPAN 10300 Beginning Elementary Spanish III (Winter 2019)
- SPAN 22520 Metaphorical Bondage, Real Captivity: Slavery as a Trope in the Iberian Atlantic (Autumn 2020)
Recent Courses in RLL
SPAN 22520 Metaphorical Bondage, Real Captivity: Slavery as a Trope in the Iberian Atlantic
This course will examine the long-lived trope of slavery as a metaphor—for love, sex, god, and imperial domination—in the Iberian Atlantic from the seventeenth to the late-nineteenth centuries. Focusing on literary, spiritual, and political texts, we will explore the ways in which slavery as a metaphor has informed understandings and conceptions of actual slavery in Ibero-America. What happens when a captive writes a poem about being enslaved to their lover? What does it mean for a slave master to define their relationship to Europe in terms of bondage? How must we read spiritual writings and religious sermons depicting God as a “true master” in slave-holding territories?
In addition to these questions, we will analyze the presence of enslaved people in literary texts written by white Creole authors in order to explore how they shape modern conceptions of freedom and whiteness. Readings will include literary texts by Cuban and Brazilian authors, religious sermons, literature written by slaves and former slaves, as well as independentist letters and pamphlets. In addressing the ubiquity of slavery both as a trope and as a concrete system of labor exploitation and capital accumulation, students will be able to better recognize the material implications of cultural artifacts, and to build connections between the Spanish, Portuguese, and Brazilian empires.
Class will be taught in English, with the possibility of extra sessions in Spanish for HLBS majors and minors.
PORT 12200 Portuguese for Spanish Speakers
This class is intended for speakers of Spanish to develop competence quickly in spoken and written Portuguese. In this intermediate-level course, students learn ways to apply their Spanish language skills to mastering Portuguese by concentrating on the similarities and differences between the two languages.
SPAN 10300 or consent of instructor.
SPAN 10300 Beginning Elementary Spanish III
This course expands on the material presented in SPAN 10200, reviewing and elaborating the basic patterns of the language as needed to prepare students for the Spanish competency examination.
SPAN 10200 or placement.