2024-2025 Afro-Brazilian Studies Research and Teaching Postdoctoral Fellow
ryanbmor@umich.edu
Office Information:
Weiser Hall, Suite 500
500 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1042
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies;
International Institute;
LACS Faculty
Education/Degree:
PhD, University of Texas at Austin, 2023
MA, Villanova University, 2016
BA, University of Pittsburgh, 2009
About
Ryan B. Morrison is the 2024-2025 Afro-Brazilian Studies Research and Teaching Postdoctoral Fellow. He is a scholar and educator of Brazilian literary and cultural studies, focusing on race and gender in the transnational Pampas of southernmost Brazil, at the border with Uruguay and Argentina. His larger theoretical and thematic interests include Black Feminisms and Critical Race Theory, Border and Frontier Theory, Language Pedagogy, and Translation Studies. He has taught Portuguese language and Brazilian cultural studies since 2018.
Ryan has published scholarship on Brazilian cultural studies in academic journals such as the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and Organon: Revista Científica do Instituto de Letras da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. His translations have appeared in Latin American Literature Today and Theatre Performance and Design. He is currently preparing a book manuscript from his dissertation research on the “Afro-Pampas,” which examines the essential and transformative role of Black and queer subjects in the making of Brazil’s southernmost frontier state of Rio Grande do Sul, a space imagined through enduring narratives of hypermasculine bravado and racial exceptionalism rooted in whiteness.
Awards and Honors
- University Graduate Continuing Fellowship, The Graduate School, University of Texas at Austin (2022)
- Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin (2019)
- Anna Luiza Osorio de Almeida Research Grant, The Brazil Center, University of Texas at Austin (2019)
- Portuguese Teachers Fellowship, Middlebury Language Schools, Middlebury College (2018)
- Creekmore and Adele Hay Fath Excellence in Foreign Languages Fellowship, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Texas at Austin (2017)
- Graduate Summer Research Fellowship, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Villanova University (2015)
- Brazil Initiation Scholarship, Brazilian Studies Association (2015)
