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Assistant Professor of
Spanish & Portuguese
Wright Hall 206;
(413)585-3361
mharriso@email.smith.edu
Office hours: Monday 9:30-11:00; Wednesday 2:30-4:00
B.A., Mary Baldwin College
M.A., University of Texas at Austin
Ph.D., Brown University
At Smith I teach Portuguese language as well as interdisciplinary courses in Brazilian studies. Having grown up in both the United States and Brazil, I am bilingual in Portuguese and English, and my translations of contemporary Brazilian fiction often appear in Brasil/Brazil, Amazonian Literary Review and Metamorphoses. Before receiving a Ph.D. in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University, I earned a Masters degree from the University of Texas at Austin in Brazilian Art, and my subsequent research has continued to draw from, and often unite, literature and the arts.
My research in contemporary Brazilian fiction and art addresses ways in which literature and visual culture can contribute to raising social consciousness, particularly in terms of gender, class, and race marginality. I have published articles in such scholarly journals as CiberLetras: Journal of Literary Criticism and Culture, Estudos de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea, Latin American Literary Review, Luso-Brazilian Review, and Revue Lusotopie. I am currently working on a study of women artists in Brazil whose works engender collective memory in a post-dictatorship period.
“The Brazilian Body” is an example of the courses that I teach here at Smith focusing on gender construction, stereotypes, and representations of the body, as well as issues of social and economic displacement and marginality. "Contemporary Cityscapes: Mapping Brazilian Culture onto an Urban Grid" also addresses issues of migration and poverty, marginality and human rights including gender and racial biases, within an urban context. I am in the process of developing a seminar entitled “Multiple Lenses of Marginality: New Brazilian Filmmaking by Women” to be offered in 2007-08.