Isis Barra Costa

Isis Barra Costa is a Brazilian-born scholar of Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Atlantic cultural thought. Born in Belo Horizonte and raised in São Paulo, she earned a B.A. in English Literature and Pedagogy at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo before moving to the United States to pursue graduate studies. She completed an M.A. in English Literature and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at New York University, where she studied with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Kamau Brathwaite. Her immersion in New York’s Black and Caribbean intellectual communities shaped her transdisciplinary approach to literature, philosophy, performance, religion, and visual culture within the Black Atlantic.

After appointments at New York University, Rutgers University, and Arizona State University, she joined The Ohio State University. Through her scholarship, teaching, and public engagement, Barra Costa seeks to position Brazil, home to the world’s largest African diaspora, as essential to understanding the cultural and intellectual histories of the Atlantic world.