Professor Maria José Somerlate Barbosa, emerita, did her graduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1997 to 2019 she worked in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa where she taught all levels of courses in language, culture, and literature. She also contributed to Latin American Studies and other University of Iowa international programs on campus and abroad, supervised language courses, and coordinated the Portuguese Program. Her scholarship displays a comparative and interdisciplinary penchant when analyzing Brazil’s literary, cultural, historical, religious, and political space. Those publications have often focused on the experience of the African diaspora and addressed gender as related to identity formation, age, class, and race. She was elected and served as vice-president and president of the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA). She also served as an elected member on the executive committee of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA), and as the president of the Luso-Brazilian subdivision within the Modern Language Association (MLA).

Maria José Barbosa CV