Education
Biography
Idelber Avelar is the author of several influential books and over a hundred scholarly articles in the fields of Latin American literary and cultural studies. In 2021 Editora Record, Brazil's largest commercial press, is publishing his Eles em nós: retórica e antagonismo no Brasil do século XXI, a synthesis of two decades of Dr. Avelar's academically informed but publicly acessible political essayism, regularly featured in Brazilian print and electronic media.
Dr. Avelar's The untimely present: postdictatorial Latin American fiction and the task of mourning (Duke UP, 1999) helped establish the field of postdictatorial studies and appeared in Chilean and Brazilian editions with Cuarto Propio and UFMG. His The letter of violence: essays in narrative, ethics, and politics (Palgrave, 2004) was published in expanded Portuguese and Spanish editions with UFMG and Palinodia. He is also the author of Crônicas do estado de exceção(Azougue, 2015) and Transculturación en suspenso: los orígenes de los cánones narrativos colombianos (Caro y cuervo, 2016), and the co-editor with Christopher Dunn of Brazilian popular music and citizenship (Duke UP, 2012).
Idelber Avelar has been a guest speaker in over twenty countries and hundreds of institutions of higher learning. Among his awards are the Modern Language Association's Kovacs prize and the Brazilian Foreign Ministry Essay Contest on Machado de Assis. He has been the recipient of Hewlett, Ford, and ACLS fellowships and maintains active Portuguese-language activity on social media.
Selected work available on the internet
Books:
Transculturación en suspenso: los orígenes de los cánones narrativos colombianos (Caro y Cuervo, 2016). Read introduction.
Crônicas do estado de exceção (Azougue, 2015). Read selections.
Brazilian popular music and citizenship (Duke UP, 2012). Read selections.
Alegorías de la derrota: la ficción posdictatorial y el trabalho del duelo en América Latina (Cuarto Propio, 2000). Read.
Academic articles:
“Energia limpa e limpeza étnica: as condições discursivas, jurídicas e políticas do ecocídio de Belo Monte.” Co-authored with Moysés Pinto Neto. Luso-Brazilian Review 57.1 (2020): 150-171. Read.
“A rebelião do eles: morfologia, léxico e sintaxe do fascismo bolsonarista.” O Estado da Arte: revista de cultura, artes e ideias (2020). Read.
“Pactos amnésicos no Brasil: notas para uma história.” O Estado da Arte: revista de cultura, artes e ideias (2019). Read.
“O oxímoro lulista e a implosão eleitoral da esquerda.” Insight Inteligência 83 (2018): 133-145. Read.
“The June 2013 uprisings and the waning of lulismo in Brazil.” Luso-Brazilian Review 54.1 (2017): 9-27. Read.
“Ascensión y caída del lulismo.” Revista Transas (2016). Universidad San Martín, Buenos Aires. Read.
“Brazilian Amerindians and the legacy of the military dictatorship.” Post-Conflict Literature: Human Rights, Peace, Justice. Ed. Chris Andrews and Matt McGuire. New York and London: Routledge, 2016. 121-29. Read.
“Postdictadura y desarrollismo: la recolonización de Amazonia y las protestas en Brasil”. Revista Meridional [Santiago, Universidad de Chile] 2 (2014): 151-166. Read.
"Revisões da masculinidade sob ditadura: Gabeira, Caio e Noll". Estudos em Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea [Universidade de Brasília, Brasil] 43 (2014): 49-68. Read.
“Más acá del apocalipsis: el realismo alucinatorio de Gustavo Ferreyra.” Zama [Instituto de literatura hispanoamericana, Buenos Aires] 3.3 (2011): 61-70. Read.
“Ficciones y rituales de la masculinidad en la obra de Borges”. La Biblioteca [Biblioteca Nacional, Buenos Aires] 13 (2013): 92-105. Read.
“Amerindian Perspectivism and Non-Human Rights.” Alter/Nativas: Latin American Cultural Studies Journal 1 (2013): 1-21. Read.
“Cenas dizíveis e indizíveis: Raça e sexualidade em Gilberto Freyre.” Luso-Brazilian Review 49.1 (2012): 168-186. Read.
"Entre o violoncelo e o cavaquinho: música e sujeito popular em Machado de Assis." Estudos em Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea [Universidade de Brasília, Brasil] 37 (2011): 171-188. Read.
"Ingermina, de Juan José Nieto: antagonismo y alegoría en los orígenes de la novela caribeña." Revista de Estudios Sociales [Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia] 38 (2011): 120-127. Read.
"O Manguebeat e a superação do fosso entre o nacional e o jovem na música popular." Outra Travessia [Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brasil] 11 (2011): 25-37. Read.
“La construcción del canon y la cuestión del valor literario.” Aisthesis [Santiago, Chile] 46 (2009): 213-221. Read.
“O Pensamento da violência em Walter Benjamin e Jacques Derrida." Cadernos Benjaminianos 1 (2009). Read.
"Valor estético e cânone literário: Notas sobre um debate de nosso tempo." Revista Brasileira de Literatura Comparada 15 (2009): 113-150. Read.
“Frutos de mi tierra, o la fabulación del valor de cambio como origen de la novela antioqueña.” Special Issue devoted to the 150th anniversary of Tomás Carrasquilla. Estudios de Literatura Colombiana 23 (2008): 15-26. Read.
“A Poetics of Discomfort: Teaching Puig with Babenco.” Approaches to Teaching Puig's The Kiss of the Spider Woman. Ed. Francine Masiello and Daniel Balderston. New York: MLA, 2007. 141-49. Read.
"Heavy Metal Music in Postdictatorial Brazil: Sepultura and the Coding of Nationality in Sound." Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 12.3 (2003) 329-46. Read.
"The Ethics of Criticism and the International Division of Intellectual Labor." SubStance 91 (2000): 80-103. Read.
“Dictatorship and immanence.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 7.1 (1998): 75-94. Read.
"Cómo respiran los ausentes: La narrativa de Ricardo Piglia." Modern Language Notes 110 (1995): 416-32.
"The Logic of Paradox in Guimarães Rosa's Tutaméia." Latin American Literary Review 43 (1994): 67-80. Read.