Silvia C. Ferreira

Associate Teaching Professor

Director of Composition

Ph.D. Comparative Literature, University of California Santa Barbara
M.A. Comparative Literature, University of California Santa Barbara
B.A. Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College

Email: sferr@uw.edu
Phone: 425-352-3755

Teaching Interests

My teaching is guided by my belief in the power of transformative pedagogy. I teach all my writing courses with attention to critical genre awareness and critical language awareness. In my classes, students generate critical perspectives on genres as socially constructed and as connected to social action. We also probe the intersections of language and power in order to understand the politics of language ideology, with the goal of envisioning what linguistic justice might look like in our own writing. My goal is to help students to both participate in and challenge different linguistic and genre practices in order to meet the rhetorical needs that are most important to them. In my literature courses, we practice reading for both the presences and absences in different types of sources. I help students develop the tools necessary to critically engage literary and other sources and to listen for voices that do not make it onto the written page. I also use my background in Middle East Studies and Brazil Studies to bring a global focus to all of the classes that I teach across disciplines.

Courses

BIS 164 Introduction to World Literature
BIS 361 Studies in American Literature
BIS 379 American Ethnic Literatures
BIS 388 Literature in Translation
B WRIT 132 Composition Stretch 1
B WRIT 133 Composition Stretch 2
B WRIT 134 Composition B WRIT 135 Research Writing

Research and Scholarship Interests

My research spans the fields of Rhetoric & Composition, Comparative Literature, Translation Studies, Middle East Studies, and Brazil Studies. I use tools from across these fields in order to draw attention to understudied archives and create spaces for dynamic expression across languages and cultures.

One line of my research is focused on the diverse cultural production of Brazil’s large Arab diaspora. I link interstitial figures from this archive, such as the nomadic peddler and the rooted plantation worker, to the formation of new genres that respond to and intervene in socio-political challenges faced by Arab immigrants. My research seeks to bring a multilingual approach to new archives of minoritized rhetoric in the Americas by interpreting English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Arabic prose genres alongside each other. It also challenges Eurocentric modes of reading by conceptualizing models for literary and rhetorical comparison at the intersections of two increasingly visible Global South locations: the Middle East and Brazil.

I believe that students are also dynamic writers who creatively draw from their own multilingual and multicultural realities in their work. I am therefore also interested in pedagogical research on best practices for centering the unique linguistic assets students bring to the writing classroom. Additional research interests of mine include assessment and writing program administration.

Selected Publications

“Al-Karmah: Rewriting the ‘Golden Rules’ of Class and Gender in the Arabic Press in São Paulo.” O mundo árabe e o Brasil: imigração, geopolítica, cultura [The Arab World and Brazil: Immigration, Geopolitics, Culture], edited by Waïl Hassan, John Tofik Karam, and José Luís Jobim, Edições Makunaima, 2024.

“Arab Diaspora in Brazil.” Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies, edited by Ben Vinson, Oxford University Press, July 2019.

“Animal Entanglements in A imensidão íntima dos carneiros.” Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, 52.2 (Fall 2019): 191–99.

“Confessions and Indiscretions: Translating the Self in the Southern Mahjar.” Journal of Arabic Literature, 47.3 (Dec. 2016): 278–305.

“Excavating Mashriqi Roots in the Mahjar: Agriculture and Assimilation in Raduan Nassar’s Lavoura arcaica.” Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East & North African Migration Studies, 2.2 (Fall/Winter 2014).

“Turco Peddlers, Brazilian Plantationists, and Transnational Arabs: The Genre Triangle of Levantine-Brazilian Literature.” The Middle East and Brazil: Perspectives on the New Global South, edited by Paul E. Amar, Indiana University Press, 2014. 279–95.

Translation of “Orientalism in Milton Hatoum’s Fiction,” by Daniela Birman. The Middle East and Brazil: Perspectives on the New Global South, edited by Paul E. Amar, Indiana University Press, 2014. 308–21.

Translation of “Rio de Janeiro’s Global Bazaar: Syrian, Lebanese, and Chinese Merchants in the ‘Saara,’” by Neiva Vieira da Cunha and Pedro Paulo Thiago de Mello. The Middle East and Brazil: Perspectives on the New Global South, edited by Paul E. Amar, Indiana University Press, 2014. 228–40.

Selected Conference Presentations

“Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) in the Research Writing Classroom.” Conference on College Composition & Communication (CCCC). Baltimore, Md. April 2025.

“Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, no. 99: ‘Arab Latin America’” (roundtable). Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Congress. Virtual. May 2021.

“Refashioning Gender in the Southern Mahjar Press.” Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Conference. Virtual. November 2018.

“A Vinha: Gender & Diaspora in Mid-Twentieth-Century São Paulo.” Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) Conference. Pontífica Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). July 2018.

“Probing the ‘Golden Rules’ of Gender: Global Feminist Rhetorics in the Arab Immigrant Press in Brazil.” Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference (Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition). University of Dayton. Oct. 2017.

“Circulating Cultural Capital in the Global South: The Southern Mahjar Intellectual Between Beirut, Cairo, and São Paulo.” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Conference. New York University. March 2014.

“Confessions and Indiscretions: The Politics of Cultural Translation in Southern Mahjar Autobiographies.” Arabic Literature: Migration, Diaspora, Exile, and Estrangement. Columbia University. Nov. 2013.

“Cecílio Carneiro’s Bonfire: Imagining the Mashriq and Mahjar in Brazilian Literature.” Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies “Mashriq-Mahjar” Conference. North Carolina State University. April 2012.