Wesley Costa de Moraes
Ph.D. Student in Spanish
Advised by Professor Oswaldo Estrada
wcosta@live.unc.edu | Dey 301A
Education
M.A., Spanish Language and Literature, Virginia Tech, 2013
B.A., Pedagogy, School Management, and Vocational Orientation. Centro Unisal-Americana, São Paulo, Brazil, 2002
Bio
Wesley is from São Paulo, Brazil. He never regretted having switched from Applied Chemistry to Languages & Literatures more than 20 years ago. Since then, he has been teaching foreign languages (English, Spanish, and Portuguese) and has worked with students of all ages, from kindergarten to college and beyond. He is a 5th year Ph.D. student in the Spanish program, and his current research interest is animality in contemporary urban fiction (literature and film) in Spanish and Portuguese. Wesley analyzes the extensive use of animal(ized) tropes to depict the evils of late modernity and how they reveal the inconsistencies and crumbling values of humanity in ‘fictional’ savage societies.
Beyond university life, he likes writing poetry, composing music, and spending time outdoors with his family.
Publications
- “El lenguaje como arma: la escritura del guerrero en Todas as vezes que dissemos adeus de Kaka Werá Jecupé.” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, vol. 7, no. 1, 2017, pp. 105-23. (article)
- “Tony Manero, Post Mortem y No: la estética de lo masculino en la trilogía de Pablo Larraín.” Letras Hispanas, vol. 11, 2015, pp. 120-32. (article)
- “La soberanía del defecto: legado y pertenencia en la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea, by Gina Saraceni.” Romance Notes, vol. 54, no. 3, 2014, pp. 437-39. (book review)
- Margens literárias no Brasil contemporâneo. Special volume on contemporary Brazilian literature. Edited with Carolina Sá Carvalho. Romance Notes, vol. 57, no.3, 2017. (forthcoming)
- “Daniel Galera.” Biographical entry for the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twenty-First-Century Brazilian Writers, vol. 384, edited by Monica Rector and Robert Anderson. (forthcoming)
- “Marçal Aquino.” Biographical entry for the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twenty-First-Century Brazilian Writers, vol 384, edited by Monica Rector and Robert Anderson. (forthcoming)