Eliseo Jacob

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Faculty

Master Instructor

eliseo.jacob@Howard.edu

Department/Office

World Languages & Cultures

School/College

College of Arts & Sciences

Additional Positions

Certified WAC Instructor
COAS Honors Program

Biography

Eliseo Jacob has a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin with a background in contemporary Latin American and Brazilian literary and cultural productions. As a faculty member in the Department of World Languages & Cultures at Howard University, he teaches courses on Portuguese language and Brazilian popular culture that focus on issues related to gender, race, and citizenship.

Dr. Jacob's recent publications contextualize literary and cultural representations of the urban periphery as part of a larger analysis regarding the relationship between race, masculinity, and citizenship in contemporary Latin American urban spaces. His current book project, Masculinidades Marginais: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in São Paulo, is an examination of literary productions produced by writers and artists from underrepresented communities in São Paulo in order to understand how representations of male youth raise larger questions surrounding citizenship. He asserts that writers and artists from contemporary marginalized urban communities in the Americas are employing creative strategies that are inherently political due to their ability to contest hegemonic discourses on how Black and brown bodies can affirm their identities in the space of the city.

His literary and cultural studies scholarship has been complemented by the development of research and teaching methods related to the digital humanities. Since 2019, he has been a scholar in the Black Book Interactive Project at the University of Kansas with a focus on creating metadata schema that addresses race-related issues. His current digital humanities project, “Afro-Artivismo: Activist Cultural Practices in Urban Spaces,” interrogates the dynamic relationship between race, space, and citizenship, and it uses the Scalar digital platform to create data visualizations of complex artistic networks in São Paulo, Brazil.

Dr. Jacob was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Brazil for the 2021-22 academic year. He developed a project on writing communities in the urban periphery of São Paulo and collaborated with faculty at the University of São Paulo. For the 2022-23 academic year he will be an ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies) Fellow completing his book manuscript.

Education

Languages and Literatures of Spanish & Portuguese

Ph.D.
The University of Texas at Austin
2014

Luso-Brazilian Literature & Culture

M.A.
The University of Texas at Austin
2009

Latin American Studies

B.A.
The University of Texas at Austin
2007

Expertise

20th-21st Century Latin American & Brazilian Urban Cultural Productions

Afro-Brazilian Literary & Cultural Productions

Digital Humanities

Public Sphere

Urban Space

Academics

Courses

Digital Humanities:

Digital Humanities Experiential Learning Series
City Scapes: Urban Spaces & Afro-Brazilian Cultures
The Afro-Brazilian Experience through Media

Latin American Studies:

Afro-Brazilian Writers
Urban Literature in Brazil
Afro-Brazilian Film
Brazilian Hip Hop

Foreign Language:

Advanced Grammar & Composition (Portuguese)
Oral Expressions (Portuguese)
Portuguese I, II, III, IV

Experiential Learning Series

Afro-Brazilian International Immersion Series, COAS Honors Program, Fall 2023

Brazilian Hip Hop Series, Department of World Languages & Cultures, Fall 2020

Accomplishments

ACLS HBCU Faculty Grant (2024-25)

Dr. Jacob was awarded an inaugural American Council of Learned Society (ACLS) HBCU Faculty Grant. to develop the digital humanities project Afro-Artivismo: Activist Cultural Practices in Urban Spaces. The project interrogates the dynamic relationships between race, space, and citizenship and uses the Scalar digital platform to create an interactive, multimodal site for users to better understand the role of the arts as a form of community engagement in addressing state violence and preserving cultural practices in the working class, outskirt communities of São Paulo, Brazil.

ACLS Fellowship (2022-23)

Dr. Jacob was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship for the 2022-23 academic year. He will use the fellowship to complete his monograph Masculinidades Marginais: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in São Paulo, which uses the theoretical framework of counterpublics to analyze contemporary literary productions from the city's historically marginalized communities with a focus on masculinity and race in urban settings.

Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award (2021-22)

Dr. Jacob was recently awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award for the 2021-22 academic year to conduct research in Brazil. He will conduct a research project on writing communities in the urban periphery of São Paulo and collaborate with faculty at the University of São Paulo.