About
My dissertation, titled "The Black Angel: Race, Fame, Law and Politics in Twentieth-Century Brazil" follows the life trajectory of Gregório Fortunato, the Afro-Brazilian chief bodyguard to ruler Getúlio Vargas, arrested for a highly publicized assassination attempt against an opposition politician in 1954, as an guiding thread to analyze themes central to modern Brazil and to the Black Atlantic, including: the construction and underpinnings of racial harmony ideologies; their uses in conservative discourse formation; the racialization of populist politics; and the fragility of Black celebrity. By uncovering the historical record of Fortunato’s life and the stories told about him, my research offers new perspectives on how his life intersected with the racial ideologies of the era. Drawing from history, law, and anthropological and literary methods of cultural analysis, I scrutinize the relationship between racial stories told about him, broader racial narratives, and the formation of political and racial ideologies in multiracial societies. My research takes Fortunato as a fully-fledged historical actor defined not only by actions imputed to him by his enemies, but as an agent with his personal agenda and motivations, someone with a story of his own, while relating his story with the development of major events in the history of race and racism in the Black Atlantic and in the American continent.
More broadly, I am interested in historical memory and mythmaking, and in the multiple intersections between race, politics, and law throughout the world. I am committed to mentoring and collaborating with other Brazilian graduate students in the U.S. through an organization I am one of the earliest members of, Brazilian Historians in the United States. I am also co-editor (with Luiz Paulo Ferraz) of the column Brasil por Brazil at the website História da Ditadura, which aims to promote integration between historians in the U.S. and in Brazil. I have presented my work at major conferences held by the Brazilian Studies Association, the Associação de Brasilianistas na Europa, and the Associação Nacional de História, among others.
Peer-reviewed publications:
Lucas Koutsoukos-Chalhoub, “Illegally Sold: The Josefa Segunda and Its Captives in New Orleans, 1818–1832,” Slavery & Abolition 44, no. 1 (2023): 69–89.
