Portuguese Literature, the World, and Embracing the "Other"
"Literature plays a crucial role in challenging stereotypes, a role that is increasingly vital in a world manipulated by profound superficiality and the exclusion of the 'other,' of everything that is different," says Dora Gago, researcher at CHAM–Centre for the Humanities and author of several works of fiction. In a conversation grounded in Portuguese literature and comparative studies, Dora Gago explores themes such as the image of the foreigner, stereotypes, and literature of exile and migration. She highlights the humanism and cultural openness—particularly towards Eastern cultures—present in the works of authors like Maria Ondina Braga, Camilo Pessanha, Ferreira de Castro, Jorge de Sena, José Rodrigues Miguéis, Agustina Bessa-Luís, Fernanda Dias, and Rodrigo Leal de Carvalho.
Dora Gago is a Senior Researcher at CHAM and an Associate Professor at the University of Macau (China). Holding a PhD in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures (NOVA FCSH), she has served as a Camões Institute Lecturer in Uruguay, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Aveiro, and a visiting postdoctoral scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (USA). She is the author of Uma Cartografia do Olhar: Exílios, Imagens do Estrangeiro e Intertextualidades na Literatura Portuguesa (finalist for the 2021 PEN Club Essay Awards) and Imagens do Estrangeiro no Diário de Miguel Torga. As a fiction writer, she has received several awards, the most recent in July 2024, when Palavras Nómadas won the Maria Ondina Braga Grand Prize for Travel Literature.
The interview is conducted by Maria Clara Leal.
Coordenation
Isabel Araújo Branco (CHAM)
Organization
CHAM / NOVA FCSH
