Mother Tongue
I served as a dramaturg over the 2021-’22 academic year for a UNCSA play focused on Brazilian waste pickers (catadores). Titled Mother Tongue, the production was conceived of and directed by Marina Zurita, a fourth-year student in UNCSA’s top-ranked drama program. The play was a devised piece, meaning that Zurita and the cast collectively produced the play’s central narrative together. Interviews that Zurita conducted with catadores in her native city of São Paulo served as the raw material for the devising process. I provided support to Zurita throughout the research process and to the director and cast while they devised the narrative, including by offering short courses on Brazilian history and culture and organizing virtual conversations with Brazilianist colleagues Manuel Rosaldo (Stanford University) and Ana Cláudia dos Santos (Providence College). Check out the dramaturg’s note in the show’s program and read more about Mother Tongue here: “‘Mother Tongue’ is first devised theater production at UNCSA by a student.”
Slave Voyages
From 2015-’16 I worked as a Research Fellow on the Slave Voyages project (formerly Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database). My work focused on processing NEH-sponsored updates to the site, user testing, and the development of Portuguese-language user guides.
Windows into English Avenue and Vine City
In 2014 I co-led an interdisciplinary group of graduate students at Emory in the production of a digital archive and analysis related to the past, present, and future of Atlanta’s English Avenue and Vine City neighborhoods. At the time, these historic neighborhoods were facing renewed threats of dispossession and displacement owing to the construction of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
View the digital archive here: “Windows into English Avenue and Vine City.”