Krista Brune

Biography:

Krista Brune specializes in modern and contemporary Luso-Brazilian literature through the lens of translation, visual and popular cultures, and intellectual history. Her book Creative Transformations: Travels and Translations of Brazil in the Americas (SUNY Press, November 2020) analyzes key moments in the travels and translations of Brazilian artists and intellectuals from the 1870s to the present. In doing so, it underscores the continued presence of Brazilians in the United States as a feature of the hemispheric Americas that complicates understandings of Latinidad. She was a resident scholar at the Penn State Humanities Institute in spring 2019 while finalizing this project. Her interest in translation extends beyond the theoretical to the practical as she has published translations of stories by Machado de Assis and Nuno Ramos and critical articles on documentarian Eduardo Coutinho.

Currently, she is working on a book that situates Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and New York as sites of encounter and exchange in the Portuguese-speaking world. By exploring how literary and artistic works depict Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone African interactions in these global cities, she contends that intersections of culture and capital facilitate forms of citizenship that go beyond legal constructs inherited from colonial structures. Another area of her research centers on Latin American popular music and cultural policies. As a Fulbright grantee to Brazil in 2007, she studied the politics of popular Brazilian music in relation to the nueva canción and nueva trova.

She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses that situate Brazil in a hemispheric or transatlantic perspective, including Translation in the Americas, Luso-Brazilian Cinema, and Latin American Cosmopolitanisms. As a visiting professor at the Universidade de São Paulo in May 2019, she co-taught the graduate seminar “Tradução e política nas Américas”. She also organizes speakers’ series and cultural events related to the Portuguese program.

Selected Publications: · “Reconceiving Hipólito José da Costa as a Transatlantic Translator.” Luso-Brazilian Review, vol. 55, no. 1, 2018, pp. 1-26. · “The Necessities and Dangers of Translation: Brazilian Literature on a Global Stage.” Comparative Critical Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2018, pp. 5-24. · “Subversive Instruments: Protest and Politics of MPB and the Nueva Canción.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 33, 2015, pp. 128-145. · “Musical Nationalism for the 21st Century: From Andrade’s Archive to A Barca’s Repertoire.” ellipsis, vol. 11, 2013, pp. 139-160.