I am Eraldo Souza dos Santos, a historian and philosopher with research interests in the history of ideas, the invention of traditions, and the politics of translation. In my current project, I trace the global history of the idea of civil disobedience to shed critical light on contemporary anti-protest rhetoric. I am also currently writing a family memoir with my mother, Nilva Moreira de Souza, probing how she, then a seven-year-old child, was sold into slavery during Brazil’s military dictatorship in the late 1960s. In it, we ask how the idea of the “afterlife of slavery” applies to modern slavery as a historical phenomenon. We were nominated for two Pushcart Prizes in 2025 and one of our poems will appear in POETRY Magazine. “She Is There,” a piece stemming from this project, will appear in Best Small Fictions 2025. The anthology features the best 110 short stories published in English worldwide in the previous year. I have also been selected by Yaddo (where I held the Abigail Angell Canfield and Cass Canfield Jr. Residency), the Blue Mountain Center, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the 2025 Tin House Autumn Online Workshop, and the 100th Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference to work on this project. My next project will explore, in turn, the racial underpinnings of the increasingly popular idea that it is necessary to defend democracy against its enemies.

I am currently an Assistant Professor of Law and Society and History (by courtesy) at the University of California, Irvine, where I also serve as Core Faculty for the Latin American Studies Minor and Graduate Emphasis. I was previously a Klarman Fellow at Cornell University and hold a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Sorbonne. 

Contact: eraldo.souzadossantos@uci.edu (I am autistic, and I suffer from often severe crises of generalized anxiety disorder. If I do not reply in 72 hours, please do not hesitate to send me a kind reminder.)

Languages: English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and ภาษาไทย

Pronouns: they/them/theirs