Isis Barra Costa is a Brazilian-born scholar of Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Atlantic cultural thought. She earned her B.A. in English Literature and Education at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo and completed her M.A. in English Literature and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at New York University. Her formation in New York’s Black and Caribbean diasporic intellectual communities shaped a transdisciplinary research agenda that bridges literature, philosophy, performance, and visual culture.

After academic appointments at NYU, Rutgers University, and Arizona State University, she joined The Ohio State University, where she is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Brazilian Cultural and Literary Studies. She is the author of Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future: Forms of Knowledge in the Afro-Brazilian Diaspora (Columbia University Press, 2026). Her current research, supported by an Arts and Humanities Accelerator and Amplifier Grant, examines Afro-Brazilian visual arts and transatlantic imaginaries.

Her work integrates scholarship, public humanities, and mentorship. In 2023 she received The Ohio State University Graduate Faculty Mentorship Award. In 2026 she will devote dedicated research time to advancing the Midwestern Afro-Digital Museum, a collaborative initiative on Afro-diasporic archives and digital infrastructures.

Select Publications and Projects

Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future: Forms of Knowledge in the Afro-Brazilian Diaspora. Columbia University Press (Black Lives in the Diaspora series, co-sponsored with Howard University), 2026

“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.

“Music of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Ijexá for Oxum.” Co-authored Ayọdejí Olugbuyiro and Bàbá Gill Ọmínirọ̀. Translator and transcriber from Anago into English). In Rice, T.; Wilson, D. (Eds.), Gateways to Understanding Music (Second Edition Ed. pp.121-124), Routledge, 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.

Recent podcast and video lectures:

Diáspora afro-brasileña y literatura del Brasil (2025). Podcast: FEXAM Media/PhoenixMundi.

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.

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 Literary and the Sacred: Undisciplined Learnings 
• 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)

• Brazilian Worlds: Literature, History, and the Arts of Resistance
• 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