About Jesus College/Our community/ People
Dr Claire Williams

Roles and subjects

Associate Professor in Brazilian Literature and Culture

Contact

Claire.Williams@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk

Academic Background

After reading for a degree in French and Spanish at Durham University, I took an M.Phil in European Literature at Cambridge and stayed there for my doctoral research on Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector.

Undergraduate Teaching

I lecture on Modern literature from the Portuguese-speaking world (from Machado de Assis to Conceição Evaristo) and teach other final year courses such as Brazilian Cinema and Contemporary Brazilian Literature. I also team teach on courses such as Lusophone African Literature, Women’s Writing in Lusophone literature and Latin American Cinema.

Graduate Teaching

Brazilian Literature (nineteenth to twenty-first centuries) and Film.

Research Interests

Women’s writing and minority writing from the Lusophone world, particularly Clarice Lispector (Brazil), Maria Ondina Braga (Portugal), and Lília Momplé (Mozambique). Also life-writing (biography), translation and travel writing.

During Spring of 2020, I participating in the translation of Escape Goat, a serialised lockdown novel by 46 Portuguese authors. I am a member of the following research networks and groups:

I am the Portuguese representative on the Steering Committee of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing, based at the Institute for Modern Languages Research at the University of London. I am on the Editorial Board of several academic journals, including Portuguese Studies and the Journal of Lusophone Studies.

Recent Publications

  1. After Clarice: Reading Lispector’s Legacy in the Twenty-First Century, co-edited with Adriana X. Jacobs (MHRA, 2021)
  2. Transnational Portuguese Studies, co-edited with Hilary Owen (LUP, 2020)
  3. ‘Possible and Impossible Dialogues: Interpreting Clarice Lispector’s Interviews for Manchete and Fatos e Fotos’, in Special Dossier on Clarice Lispector’s Journalism, ed. Mariela Méndez, Journal of Lusophone Studies 4.2 (2019), pp. 198-218
  4. ‘Tracing Back Trauma: the Legacy of Slavery in Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literature by Women’, Angelaki 22: 1 (March 2017)

Links

Subject notes for courses taught at Jesus College:

See also St Peter’s College website and Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages website.