Meet Gabriel Chagas | Teacher & Translator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Gabriel Chagas and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Gabriel, what inspires you?
If this question were “who” I am inspired by, it would be easy to say: Dr. Martin Luther King. Perhaps, he is the most relevant influence I have always had in my personal life and career. Nevertheless, I can still answer what inspires me based on what I learned from Dr. King. Culture, language, and diversity inspire me more than anything else. But I do not mean the simple act of learning new things in these fields. Instead, what inspires me is the possibility of sharing what I have learned and, therefore, learning from others what they know. Unfortunately, our society sometimes deals with knowledge as something to be accumulated and kept for ourselves. I disagree. I do not believe in a type of knowledge that does not produce a network. We should all learn to spread what we have learned.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I was 16, a bit younger than the average when I entered college. In the beginning, that new world was not easy, but I fell in love with my field and realized I was where I was supposed to be. I got a double major in Portuguese and English from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. Right after graduation, I decided to start graduate school and got a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature. As many people know, Brazilian universities face many challenges, ranging from the lack of infrastructure to the difficulties of public transportation. However, our schools are excellent, and I had the opportunity to learn from outstanding professors in the field. When I concluded my Master’s thesis and got my degree, I started to work towards my Ph.D. in Brazil. Finally, when I realized that it was time to expand my horizons, I moved to the US. In 2020, I applied to the University of Miami, where I am currently pursuing my second Ph.D. and serving as an instructor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. In other words, we need to turn fear into hope, for having hope is a political act.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Miami has many interesting things to offer. If I had to choose the main ones, I would say the beach – the most obvious one -, Wynwood Walls and Pérez Museum. These are places where one can appreciate culture in many different forms.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Brazilian writer Guimarães Rosa said that, despite all the challenges, life wants us to be brave. This sentence is the first one that comes to my mind when I think about encouragement. Books – and languages, in general – have always been an endless source of inspiration and hope for me. That is why I decided to work with them. I could mention hundreds of writers who have inspired me or people I learned from. But, among all of them, I choose Guimarães Rosa. Not only because I want to underscore the power of Brazilian Literature but because, at the end of the day, what we need to do is to be brave.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chagasgab/