School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies

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Rui Miranda

Associate Professor in Lusophone Studies, Faculty of Arts

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Biography

In 2010, I was awarded a PhD in Lusophone Studies by the University of Nottingham. My doctoral thesis is titled "A Casa por Fabricar: Aspects and Spectres of a 'portuguesmente eu'- Reading Fernando Pessoa through Jacques Derrida".

In 2011, I started a post-Doctoral project financed by the Fundação Ciência e Tecnologia (Lisbon; reference SFRH/BPD/7145/2010), titled "O mundo que criou o português: transladações e disseminações".

I have worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the University of Nottingham and as the Instituto Camões Portuguese Instructor in Queen Mary College, University of London.

Teaching Summary

Year 1

I have designed and taught for over a decade on popular culture in the Portuguese-Speaking world (music, sports culture, media) while addressing the modern process of nation-building in Brazil and Portugal, the rise of authoritarianism and colonialist repression in the first half of the twentieth century, and finally the anti-colonial struggle and post-independence projects in Mozambique, Angola and Cape Verde as well as the construction of post-authoritarian democracies on both sides of the Atlantic. Currently, the module ends on the challenges faced by the rise of authoritarianism in the digital age. I also contribute to a team-taught module, After Empires, in which I address the work of artists in the Global South addressing the legacies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and post-socialism and neoliberalism in postcolonial Angola and Mozambique.

Year 2

I have co-designed and co-taught for the last four years a Year 2 module that addresses the history of colonization of the "New World", the cultural processes underlying the wave of independence in the 19th century, on the ideological projects and struggles of the 20th century (authoritarianism and Marxism; developmentalism, dependency; neoliberalism) that draw from and/or contextualize the legacy and history of colonialism, and, finally, on the decolonial approach currently framing discussions in Central and South America.

Final Year

I have designed and delivered a module on Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies through Literature and Film and I am currently teaching a module titled Memories and the Future in Iberian and Latin American Culture and Politics. The module focuses on documentaries and feature films addressing the legacy, memorialization and "memory wars" in the context of the new democratic states and challenges to reactionary neoliberalism surrounding the Military Dictatorships in South America (Brazil, Chile, Argentina), the fascist regimes in the Iberian Peninsula, the "Dirty War" in Mexico, and the Civil Wars in Guatemala and Mexico. The module focuses therefore on attempts to move away from presentism and to counteract the slow cancelation of the future, addressing projects that critique the current regimes of neoliberal historicity and semiocapitalism.

Research Summary

My research focuses on the relationship between cultural outputs, history and politics in South America, Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa in late 20th and 21st century. It has a particular focus on… read more

Recent Publications

I am one of the Directors of the Centre for Memory Studies and Post-Conflict Cultures, alongside Dr Ute Hirsekorn. The Centre is a dynamic hub for scholars with an interest in the field. It has an established track record in the organizing of international conferences and symposia, which brought together researchers from the Global South and the Global North, as well as publications. My interests in these fields are visible throughout most of my published work, which includes a volume in the Studies in Post-Conflict Cultures series.

Current Research

My research focuses on the relationship between cultural outputs, history and politics in South America, Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa in late 20th and 21st century. It has a particular focus on resistance to colonialism and authoritarian right-wing dictatorships; on the historical role of cultural products and discourses in revolutionary periods and democratic transitions; on their present role as both symptom and diagnosis of reactionary neoliberalism and ensuing authoritarian discourses. I have an interest in comparative, transnational studies (South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, the Southern Cone), with a focus on anticolonial and decolonial approaches, on memory and archival work in post-authoritarian contexts, and on the resistance to oppressive neoliberal governmentality.

My research engages with the critical tradition in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking contexts, and with a tradition of critical theory via the writings of Jacques Derrida, Annette Kuhn, Jacques Rancière, Roberto Esposito, Achilles Mbembe, Wendy Brown, David Harvey, Franco Bifo Berardi and Mark Fisher.

I am part of international research networks with Universities in Spain, Portugal and Ukraine, as well as on a number of activities with colleagues based in Brazil, Chile and Argentina.

Past Research

Modernism and Poetry

My PhD thesis addressed literary discourse and Critical Theory, focusing on Modernist poet Fernando Pessoa and Jacques Derrida. I have continued to publish and research on Modernist literature and on poetry, with recent interests on the relationship between literature and philosophy, and between poetry and A.I.

Narratives in postcolonial and post-authoritarian contexts

I have published critiques of postcolonial ideologies and hybridism in travel writings in Sub-Saharan Africa (Gilberto Freyre), on memory and culture wars in 21st-century Brazil (focusing on the rhetoric of right-wing authoritarian movements in Brazil), and on postcolonial literature in Angola and Mozambique, deploying an interdisciplinary apparatus which critiques Transatlantic, Indian Ocean and World(-)Literature frameworks. I am currently interested in the critique of the decolonial.

Film, cultural identity and memory

I have researched and published on women filmmakers, on dedicated volumes and as part of research projects dedicated to the topic, on both feature and documentary films (Margarida Cardoso, Susana de Sousa Dias, Maria de Medeiros).

I have published on questions related to memory, intermediality and genre on directors such as Miguel Gomes, João César Monteiro and Manoel de Oliveira.

Future Research

My current book project aims to investigate the ways in which the contemporary generation of writers and filmmakers from the Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Chile) engage with the challenges posed by an acritical and unquestioning view of the recent past, namely the Military Dictatorships which ruled the different countries (1976-83; 1964-85; 1973-1990) and the transition to democracy; or, in some cases, the weaponization of the memory of that same past. Their vigorous critique of 21st -century democratic, post-dictatorship societies betrays a concern with the return of authoritarian rhetoric (and rule) which echoes, and in many ways prefigures, global (North and South) concerns about the rise of "strongmen" and populism. It will interrogate the works' dual critique of remaining colonial structures and of neoliberal policies implemented under the military dictatorships as specific challenges facing Southern Cone post-transition societies. It will further address the mechanisms structuring specific forms and genres (the thriller, the detective genre, sci-fi, satire), modes of fiction (weird and the eerie), frameworks (critical irrealism, speculative fiction) and the prolific use of intertextual and cultural references (through the lens of cultural rhetoric).

  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2024. Yvone Kane, memory, mourning and melancholia. Unresolved pasts and “lost futures”. In: ANA GABRIELA MACEDO, MARGARIDA ESTEVES PEREIRA, JOANA PASSOS and MÁRCIA OLIVEIRA, eds., Women, the Arts, and Dictatorship in the Portuguese-Speaking Context: Tensions, Disputes, and Post-Memory Heritage De Gruyter.
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2023. Language and the prison-house: The cultural rhetoric of Brazil's cultural memory wars. In: VLADIMER LUARSABISHVILI, ed., Cultural Rhetoric: Rhetorical Perspectives, Transferential Insights IV. New Vision University Press. 133-154
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA and FRANCESCA PASCIOLLA, eds., 2021. Fernando Pessoa: Abordagens Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies in the Humanities.
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2021. Mensagem: Uma espécie de solução... não demasiado definitiva. In: RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA and FRANCESCA PASCIOLLA, eds., Fernando Pessoa: Abordagens Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies in the Humanities. 194-217
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2020. History, literature and the indices of the Ocean. Force of signification in Borges Coelho’s ”A força do mar de Agosto”. In: ELENA BRUGIONI, PAULO DE MEDEIROS and ORLANDO GROSSEGESSE, eds., A Companion to João Paulo Borges Coelho Peter Lang.
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2020. Looking back for ways ahead: Revisioning post-Dictatorship memories in Repare bem (Maria de Medeiros) and Luz Obscura (Susana de Sousa Dias) Diacrítica: WOMANART - Mulheres, Artes e Ditadura: Os casos de Portugal, Brasil e Países Africanos de Língua Portuguesa. 34(2), 29-47
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2019. “quase devagar” – desvios e choques na estrada aberta de Sintra. Álvaro de Campos ao luar e ao volante na companhia de Marinetti, Apollinaire e Alberti. In: CAIO CAGLIARDI, ed., Fernando Pessoa e cia. não heterônima Mundaréu.
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2019. ‘Aprendiz de Proust’: Gilberto Freyre in Search of a Lost Past and a Renewed Future in Aventura e rotina Bulletin of Spanish Studies. 96(8), 1317-42
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2018. Autoridades, forças e violências em “Casas de ferro”, de João Paulo Borges Coelho: Entre a abertura ao desconhecido e a imaginação do futuro Remate de Males: Revista do Departamento de Teoria Literária. 38(1), 75-99
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2018. Fintar o destino: Between the colonial bond and a postcolonial double-bind Portuguese Studies. 34(2), 148-166
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2018. Cenas de escrita. João César Monteiro: escritor de cinema, o cineasta de escritas. In: PEDRO EIRAS, ROSA MARTELO and JOANA MATOS FRIAS, eds., Ofício Múltiplo: poetas em outras artes Afrontamento. 169-188
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2017. Personal Infinitive: Inflecting Fernando Pessoa Critical, Cultural and Communications Press.
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2017. Our Beloved Month of August: Between the filming of the real and the reality of filming. In: MARIANA LIZ, ed., Portugal's Global Cinema: Industry, History and Culture IB Tauris. 33-46
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2017. "Why did they take down the pictures?" Conspicuous absences and "la historia de algo más" in Roberto Bolaño's Estrella Distante. In: ADAM SHARMAN, MILENA GRASS KLEINER, ANNA MARIA LORUSSO and SANDRA SAVOINI, eds., MemoSur/MemoSouth: Memory, commemoration and trauma in post-dictatorship Argentina and Chile. Critical, Cultural and Communications Press.
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2016. As Narrativas e o Poder. Do “Prêmio Portugal Telecom de Literatura Brasileira” ao “Oceanos: Prêmio de Literatura em Língua Portuguesa”. In: ANA GABRIELA MACEDO, ELENA BRUGIONI and JOANA PASSOS, eds., Prémios Literários: O Poder das Narrativas / As Narrativas do Poder Afrontamento. 197-212
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2015. Mal de Mar: A Reading of Jorge de Sena’s “A Grã-Canária” in (trans-) Atlantic Transit Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies: The South Atlantic, Past and Present. 27, 235-253
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2014. 'Liberdade, Igualdade, Fraternidade ou a Morte?': Extravios do post/al colonial em Nação Crioula Via Atlântica: Triangulações Atlânticas - transnacionalidades em língua portuguesa. 147-165
  • RUI GONÇALVES, M., 2013. Murmuring another('s) story: histories under the sign of the feminine, pre- and post- the Portuguese Revolution of 1974. In: NAIR, P. and GUTIÉRREZ-ALBILLA, J.D., eds., Hispanic and Lusophone women filmmakers: theory, practice and difference Manchester University Press.
  • GONÇALVES MIRANDA, R., 2013. Mostrengos. In: GRAY DE CASTRO, M., ed., Fernando Pessoa's modernity without frontiers: influences, dialogues, responses Tamesis.
  • GONÇALVES MIRANDA, R., 2013. Restor(y)ing meaning: reading Manoel de Oliveira's Non ou a Vã Glória de Mandar Hispanic Research Journal. 14(1), 49-66
  • FEDERICA ZULLO and RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, eds., 2013. Post-conflict reconstructions : re-mappings and reconciliations Critical, Cultural and Communication Press.
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2013. Europe's Wake? Topographies under reconstruction in the South Atlantic. In: FEDERICA ZULLO and RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, eds., Post-conflict reconstructions : re-mappings and reconciliations Critical, Cultural and Communication Press.
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2013. MULTITUDINOUS SEAS: HAROLDO DE CAMPOS, A ANTROPOFAGIA E O MARTEXTO. In: EUNICE RIBEIRO, ed., Modernidades Comparadas Húmus. 183-203
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2013. Re(in)sistindo: Textos e contextos da casa amarela elyra. 185-208
  • GONÇALVES MIRANDA, R., 2012. Masters and spectres: Pessoa's haunts. In: FRIER, D.G., ed., Pessoa in an intertextual web: influence and innovation Legenda.
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2012. El tiempo una y otra vez: la "Hora" de Pessoa Despalabro: Ensayos de Humanidades. 6, 147-164
  • GONÇALVES MIRANDA, R., 2012. Os pas(sos) em Pessoa Diacrítica. 26(3), 263-282
  • RUI GONÇALVES MIRANDA, 2007. Constructed Happiness: On the Seductions of Messianism – Portugal with or without Sebastian. In: BERNARD MCGUIRK and CONSTANCE GOH, eds., Happiness and Post-Conflict Critical, Cultural and Communication Press. 131-143

School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies

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