Richard A. Gordon

Dr. Richard A. Gordon (Ph.D. Brown University, 2002) is Professor of Brazilian and Spanish-American Literature and Culture at the University of Georgia and Co-Director of UGA's Department of Defense Portuguese Flagship Program. His research focuses largely on historical film and social identity, specifically, the capacity for cinema to influence how people understand the social groups that they belong to. Gordon’s first book, Cannibalizing the Colony: Cinematic Adaptations of Colonial Literature in Mexico and Brazil (Purdue University Press, 2009), analyzes how and why filmmakers in Brazil and Mexico appropriate and transform colonial narratives of European and indigenous contact into commentaries on national identity. His second book, Cinema, Slavery, and Brazilian Nationalism (University of Texas Press, 2015) examines how a group of Brazilian films about slavery propose new ways to conceive of Brazilianness. The collection of essays, Beyond Tordesillas: Critical Essays in Comparative Luso-Hispanic Studies, which he has co-edited with Prof. Robert P. Newcomb, is forthcoming in 2017. Gordon’s articles have appeared in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, including Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Luso-Brazilian Review, Hispania, MLN, and Colonial Latin American Review.