Pedro Meira Monteiro

Position
Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
Role
Chair of Department - ON SABBATICAL 2023-2024
Office Phone
Office
349 East Pyne
Office Hours

Office hours by appointment via WASE.

Bio/Description

Profile

Pedro Meira Monteiro is the Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

At Princeton, as well as abroad, he has taught courses on literature and society with a main focus on Brazil. The topics range from fiction, poetry, essays, and music to politics, philosophy, race, and citizenship; his seminars have included “#readwomen,” “Thinking Through Plants," ”Modernismos Negros," and “Sound and Sense.”

Working at the intersection of cultural history and literature, Professor Meira Monteiro complements his academic production by writing shorter texts for cultural magazines, blogs, and newspapers. He has edited, translated and authored a number of books, including The Other Roots: Wandering Origins in Roots of Brazil and the Impasses of Modernity in Ibero-America (Notre Dame UP, 2017), Conta-gotas: Máximas & Reflexões (E-galáxia, 2016), The First Class: Transits of Brazilian Literature Abroad (Itaú Cultural, 2014, also available in Portuguese and Spanish), and Nós somos muitas: ensaios sobre crise, cultura e esperança (Relicário, 2022, with Arto Lindsay, Flora Thomson-DeVeaux and Rogério Barbosa).

Pedro Meira Monteiro created and co-directed the Princeton summer program in Brazil. In 2018, João Biehl and he created Princeton’s Brazil LAB (Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies), a multi-disciplinary research hub for exploring the history, politics, culture and science from Portuguese-speaking areas and beyond. More recently, he co-curated a series of events at FLUP (Literary Festival of the Peripheries in Rio de Janeiro) and was the co-curator of Flip (International Literary Festival of Paraty) in 2021 and 2022. With Jaime Lauriano and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Professor Meira Monteiro curated the major exhibition “Contramemória” (Counter Memory) at São Paulo’s Municipal Theater in 2022.

A year before he came to Princeton in 2002, Meira Monteiro received his PhD in Literary Theory and History from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil, where he had also received a BA (1993) in Social Sciences and an MA (1996) in Sociology; he also has a DEA (2000) in Socio-Cultural History from the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in France.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Literary Theory and History from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil
  • DEA in Socio-Cultural History from the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in France
  • M.A. in Sociology from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil
  • B.A. in Social Sciences from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil