Victoria Saramago

Victoria Saramago is an Associate Professor in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures and the College at the University of Chicago, serving as Director of Graduate Studies and HLBS Graduate Adviser. She holds a PhD from Stanford University (2015). Her research focuses on 20th- and 21st-century Latin American literatures, particularly Brazilian studies, environmental humanities, energy humanities, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature and the environment.

Her monograph Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America (2020) received the Roberto Reis Book Award and was shortlisted for the ASLE Book Award. Her current work Against the Current: Electricity and Culture in Brazil examines cultural critiques of Brazil’s developmentalist energy policies, funded by the NEH and Franke Institute. She co-edited Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics (2023) and Literature Beyond the Human (2022), both landmark works in environmental humanities.

Her articles appear in New Literary History, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, and Luso-Brazilian Review. She co-directs research initiatives like the Neubauer Collegium’s “Fossil Capitalism in the Global South” and the De Gruyter book series SubAtlantic. Courses taught include The Amazon: Literature, Culture, Environment and From Cannibalism to Tropicalism: Brazilian Avant-Gardes.

Awards include NEH fellowships and ASLE grants. Affiliations include the Center for Latin American Studies and Katz Center for Mexican Studies.