STILL THEY RISE IN THE CLASSROOM

Abstract

This article examines Still They Rise: Gender, Bodies, and Writing in Brazil and Beyond, a co-taught advanced Portuguese course that approached language and literature as a single act of world-making. Grounded in feminist, decolonial, and queer epistemologies, the course proposed tension and confluence as guiding principles in the classroom, by bringing bodies, genres, and histories to the forefront, to unsettle canonical boundaries while cultivating collective forms of listening. We reflect on how these principles shaped the syllabus – pairing authors who rarely inhabit the same frame – and how our guests wove their voices into our trajectory. In practice, a discussion-circle format and student-led sessions shifted authority laterally, turning reading into a shared act. The final assignments translated these dialogues into materiality through translation, textiles, performance, and photography, exemplified here by a student’s diorama-house that reimagined a series of rooms “of one’s own” as a collective, intersectional home. Eventually, we argue that teaching Brazilian and Latin American literature abroad can build epistemic and affective bridges, transforming reading into a practice of relation and enabling students to think through difference and encounter.