Rodrigo Lopes de Barros

Rodrigo Lopes de Barros is a cultural critic, filmmaker, writer, and currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Spain.

He has also held several other academic positions during his career. Lopes de Barros was a Research Affiliate in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures at Harvard University and an Assistant Professor of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies at Boston University, where he held the position of Head of the Portuguese Section and Director (ad interim) of the Cinema & Media Studies Program. He has a BA in Law and an MA in Literary Theory from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, the latter with a fellowship from CNPQ (the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development). He received a PhD in Hispanic Literature from The University of Texas at Austin with work in the fields of Cuban and Brazilian cultures. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of São Paulo with a fellowship from FAPESP and was invited to visiting faculty positions at Harvard University and the Federal University of Espírito Santo. His scholarly interests include the relationship between ethnography and literature, the avant-garde cinema and contemporary art in Cuba and Brazil, and the relationship between art, music, and national histories.

Lopes de Barros is the author of Distortion and Subversion: Punk Rock Music and the Protests for Free Public Transportation in Brazil (1996-2011) (Liverpool University Press). In this book, he uses the method of cyber-archaeology of websites, archival research, and interviews to discuss how the Brazilian punk and hardcore music scene joined forces with political militants to foster a new social movement that demanded the universal right to free public transportation. These groups collaborated in numerous venues and media: music shows, protests, festivals, conferences, radio stations, posters, albums, slogans, and digital and printed publications. (The PDF of the book is available in open access here)  

As a filmmaker, Lopes de Barros directed the documentaries Chacal: Forbidden to Write Poetry (Chacal: Proibido Fazer Poesia), for which he received the Award of Merit in Film from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and Ricardo Aleixo: Afro-Atlantic, which received the Pierre Verger Award in Ethnographic Film from the Brazilian Anthropological Association. He also directed the hybrid Literary Ménage: An Investigation into the Writing of Jacques Fux (Ménage Literário: Uma Investigação sobre a Escrita de Jacques Fux), which was published as a trilingual book/DVD (Relicário Edições), and the fiction short film The Body (O Corpo).

Other essays by Lopes de Barros on Brazilian and Cuban cultures have appeared as chapters of books and journal articles in places like Afterimage, Comparative Literature Studies, Topoi, and Alea: Estudos Neolatinos. He co-edited the book Ruinologias: Ensaios Sobre Destroços do Presente (EdUFSC) and his short stories have been published in several literary magazines. As a literary writer, he was among the winners of “Cultural Contest ‘Caderno 2’ in the 450 Years of São Paulo” by the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo. As a press editor, he co-organized the publication of contemporary intellectuals into Portuguese through Editora Cultura e Barbárie, which he co-founded.

Lopes de Barros has supervised six PhD dissertations so far and his advisees went on to hold positions in institutions such as Northeastern University, Ohio University, Simpson College, and Merrimack College. Moreover, beyond FAPESP and CNPq, his research and audiovisual productions were funded by organizations such as the Spanish Ministry of Territory and Democratic Memory.