Graduate Student in Spanish
Fernanda Alves dos Santos is a Ph.D. Candidate in Hispanic Language and Literatures at Boston University. Her research examines contemporary Afro-Latin American literature, focusing on how Black women writers revisit the colonial past to challenge archival silences and reimagine histories of Black life in the Americas. Drawing on Black feminist thought, Black Geographies, critical fabulation, and decolonial theory, she explores how literary form produces alternative modes of historical knowledge, memory, and spatial imagination.
At Boston University, she teaches Portuguese and Spanish language and culture courses and previously developed and taught Inventing Brazil: Inequalities and Contradictions. Her work has been recognized with the Department of Romance Studies Teaching Excellence Award and the BU Diversity & Inclusion Learn More Research Grant. She was selected (from 68 applicants across 6 countries) to participate in the 2026 Mark Claster Mamolen Dissertation Workshop, hosted by the Afro-Latin American Research Institute (ALARI) at Harvard University. Her broader research interests include Afro-Latin American studies, Black diaspora studies, literary criticism, archive studies, and the intersections of literature, race, and history.