It’s April in Porto. It’s cold and it’s raining cats and dogs. At CETAPS, a group of junior researchers in Anglo-American Studies is organizing and streamlining a few online projects related to it. Both the Alimentopia project – an archive for a multidisciplinary research project on utopian visions of the future conditions of food production and consumption – and the ARUS Digital Repository – a major collection of critical bibliography on utopian studies originally compiled by Lyman Tower Sargent – are being worked on. There is a lot to be done, but there is a team of four young master’s students between the ages of 23 and 25 hammering away at it. Below, we present to you the members of this Fantastic Four.
Joana Pinela is currently a second year student on the Anglo-American Studies (AAS) Master’s Program and she is writing a thesis on the poetry of Diane Di Prima. She took a bachelor’s degree in Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Porto and she has been a volunteer English teacher, teaching mostly adults. She is especially passionate about North-American literature.
Joel Faustino is a first year student at the AAS Master’s Program. He has a bachelor’s degree in Translation (German and English) from the University of Porto and has worked as a teacher in public and private schools in Portugal. He is fascinated by aesthetics and North-American history.
Lile Kobaliani is from Georgia and is in her first year of the AAS Master’s Program. She studied English Language and Literature at LCC International University at Klaipėda, Lithuania. She has worked as a writer before, and has a passion for literature and cinema.
Raquel Souza is from Brazil and she is taking her first year in the AAS Master’s Program. She studied journalism at Universidade Lusófona do Porto, and has done volunteer English teaching work as well. Despite not having studied literature, she came to her master’s because she is interested in North-American culture and how it relates to cinema.
These will be the people who will contribute to updating the Digital Lab blog for the foreseeable future. We are hoping we can bring something new to it.