Thamyris Almeida
Thamyris Almeida is a Brazilian historian of Latin America whose research and teaching focus on Latin America history with an emphasis on popular culture, media, and the Cold War. She received her Ph.D. in Latin American and Caribbean History from Brown University in 2022.
Her book manuscript, Soul of a Modern Nation: Television in Cold War Brazil, combines historical analysis with cultural readings of texts and narratives to reframe television as part of a larger project of national transformation. Almeida emphasizes how TV programs and the cultural discourses they generated constitute an ideal prism through which to explore the interplay of morality and cultural politics against the backdrop of Cold War authoritarianism. Tracing the development of the medium in Brazil, this work highlights the hemispheric dimensions of Cold War-era discourses on development, technology and morality, and their impact on Brazilian television. Almeida’s research has been funded by the Tinker Foundation and a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. She also received an honorable mention for the Ford Foundation Dissertation Completion Fellowship.
At Dartmouth College, Almeida taught survey courses in Latin American Studies and New Latin American Cinema, as well as thematic classes on Brazilian Film and Latinx history through a televisual lens as a Lecturer in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies. She also served as the Brown/Wheaton Faculty Fellow in History at Wheaton College (2020-2021) and as a Marilyn Yarbrough Dissertation Fellow and Instructor in History at Kenyon College (2021-2022). As a first-generation college graduate and formerly undocumented Latinx immigrant of color, she has advocated for greater inclusion in higher education through mentorship of undergraduate students and departmental service.
In Fall 2023, Almeida will start a two-year appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Program of Latin America and Latino Studies at Swarthmore College.
