Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Professor of Comparative Literature

Overview

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 between 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. He is the author of more than eighty titles in Brazilian literature, comparative literature, and Brazilian intellectual history. Professor Valente is co-founder and Co-Editor of Brasil/Brazil: A Journal of Brazilian Literature, is a former Consulting Editor for Latin American Literature of The Explicator, and has been on editorial boards of many journals in the United States and Brazil, including Luso-Brazilian ReviewJournal of Lusophone Studies, SOLETRASAletria: Revista de Estudos de Literatura, eellipsis, and others. Active in a variety of professional and scholarly organizations, Professor Valente is a past President of the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA) and of the Northeastern Association of Brazilianists (NAB), is a former member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL), and has on two separate occasions served on the Executive Committee of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA). He has also served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Division of Luso-Brazilian Literature of the Modern Language Association (MLA) twice has twice been a delegate to the MLA General Assembly.  In the summers of 1988 and 1993 he was Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. In the spring of 2009 he was named the Thomas Hawkins Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the US Military Academy (West Point). Professor Valente was Chair of the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from 2003 to 2012. He served as the Director of the Brown-in-Brazl Program since its inception in 1985. Since 2021 he has served as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.


Some recent publications: MUNDIVIVENCIAS: LEITURAS COMPARATIVAS DE GUIMARAES ROSA; "La modernité dissidante de Manoel Bomfim," "Crítica e dissidência"; "Euclides da Cunha and the José de Alencar Tradition"; "A atualidade do pensamento sociológico de Guerreiro Ramos"; "Fiction and Metafiction in Paulo Scott's Habitante irreal"; "From Yoknapatawpha to Piratinga and Beyond: Antônio Dutra's Dias de Faulkner"; "'Além dos porões fétidos da história': os rebelamentos poéticos de Marcos Dias";  "O desencanto com a República: Euclides da Cunha, Lima Barreto e Machado de Assis"; "Antonio Cícero e a poética das ruínas"; “From Synthesis to Difference: Lima Barreto’s Parodic Ufanismo"; "A poética intransitiva de Ferreira Gullar"; "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 2011); "The Refiguration of Brazil's Eighteenth Century in Romanceiro da Inconfidência."


Courses offered:

  • Brazilian Fictions of the Self
  • Fiction and History
  • A Comparative Introduction to the Literatures of the Americas
  • Tales of the Sertão
  • Nation and Narration                                                          
  • Comparative Approaches to the Literatures of Brazil and the United States  
  • Foundations of Literary Theory
  • Modern and Contemporary Brazilian Poetry
  • The Brazilian Puzzle: Confronting the Post-Colonial Legacy                                                      

Brown Affiliations