Isis Barra Costa was born in Belo Horizonte and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature at New York University, where she also received an MA in English Literature.  She has co-authored anthologies in Argentina with Eduardo Muslip (Brasil: ficciones de argentinos and Passo da Guanxuma: contactos culturales entre Brasil y Argentina), in Portugal with Denis Renó (on media ecology, image studies, and digital knowledge-making), as well as in the U.S. with Emanuelle Oliveira-Monte (a special issue of the Afro-Hispanic Review on the Afro-Brazilian Diaspora). Professor Barra Costa’s main area of research is Afro-Brazilian oral literature, performance and philosophy. She serves the profession through committees in several professional associations, including the Brazilian Studies Association, the Brazilian section of the Latin American Studies Association, and the Afro Digital Museum (UERJ in Rio de Janeiro).

Her upcoming book, entitled Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future: Philosophies, Cosmologies, and Religious Traditions of the Afro-Brazilian Diaspora (Columbia University Press, 2025), is an exposé of overlooked African diasporic forms of knowledge, art, history, religion, philosophy, and cosmology. In 2023, Professor Barra Costa became the sole recipient of the Graduate Faculty Mentorship Award for the College of Arts and Sciences.

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Select Publications and Projects:

 

“Challenging the Boundaries of Bodies.” Art conference organized by Isis Barra Costa and Alison Crocetta (Department of Art) that took place at the Universidade Estadual do Paraná in Curitiba in the summer of 2024.

“Other Forests: The Afro-Brazilian Literary Archive.” In  Améfrica in Letters: Literary Interventions from Mexico to the Southern Cone. Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar, editor. Vanderbilt University Press, 2022.

“Afro-Brazilian Arts and Activism Series.” Organized by Isis Barra Costa and Lúcia Costigan. In partnership with Pamela Espinosa de los Monteros. Translated by Raquel Luciana de Souza. Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies at Ohio State University In partnership with the University Libraries Area Studies Department Global Comics Lecture Series. With the support of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. 2021.

Prefácio. In Mier, C.; Versuti, A.; Santinello, J. (Eds.), Comunicação, educação e a construção do conhecimento (2 Ed. pp. 9-17). Ria Editorial, Aveiro, 2019.

“Por um arquivo literário afro-brasileiro: uma introdução à obra de Edimilson de Almeida Pereira.” Brasiliana: Journal for Brazilian Studies, 8 (1-2), 394-400, 2019.

“Álbum de recuerdos de Passo da Guanxuma: tránsitos académicos y literarios entre español y el português.” In Kornfeld, L. (Eds.), De lenguas, ficciones y patrias (1 Ed. pp. 123-148). Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, 2014.

Passo da Guanxuma: Contactos culturales entre Brasil y Argentina. Isis Costa and Eduardo Muslip, editors. Buenos Aires: Editorial Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, 2013.

Brasil: Ficciones de Argentinos. Isis Costa and Eduardo Muslip, editors. Buenos Aires: Casa Nova, 2013.

Afro-Hispanic Review. Special Issue on Afro-Brazil. Isis Costa and Emanuelle Oliveira-Monte, editors. 29.2, 2010.

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Recent podcast and video lectures:

Making Sense of Afro-Brazilian History (2022) Podcast: Voices of Excellence from Arts and Science.

La escritura creativa en Ohio State (2019). Podcast:  Ohio Habla.
A arte visual negra contemporânea e a construção de novas narrativas imagéticas (2018). Video Conference: Congresso Internacional Media Ecology and Image Studies.

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TEACHING

Graduate Courses Taught: Studies in Literatures and Cultures of the Portuguese-Speaking World (5650), Portuguese for Spanish Speakers (5501-02), Cinema of the Portuguese-Speaking World (7400), and Seminar in Comparative Luso-Hispanic Literature and Culture) (7500)

• Afro-Brazilian Rituals and Performances
• Afro-Brazilian Literature and Orature
• Black Brazilian Art and Activism (from the 18^th to the 21^st Century)
• Brazilian Cinema: New Means of Expression and Modes of Representation
• Brazilian Audiovisual Narratives
• Literary Criticism: Memory, History, and Literature 
• Transtextuality in the Portuguese Speaking World: Literature and Film Adaptation
• The Remix Culture of Brazilian Multimedia Artistic Expressions: Literatures and Multimodal transpositions
• Literature and Ciberculture: 21st Century Brazilian Literature
• Contactos culturales entre Brasil y Argentina
• Portuguese for Spanish Speakers I and II

Undergraduate Courses Taught: (2330, 2520, 3402, 3403, 3450, 4193, and 4597)

• Introduction to Brazilian Studies: Brazilian Music
• Introduction to Portuguese-speaking Literatures and Cultures
• Representing Identity in the Cinema of the Portuguese-Speaking World
• Latin American Literature in Translation
• Portuguese Conversation and Composition
• Portuguese Reading and Listening