The theme of the seas has long been a central topic in scholarship on the Lusophone world, but more recent research has invested ocean crossings with new relevance and urgency. Instead of focusing on the stereotypical ocean crossings of the Portuguese maritime expansion, Ocean Crossing brings together a diversity of approaches focused on the “less obvious” sea mobilities within the Lusophone world, those associated with labor, brutality, precariousness, and indentured migration. Included in this volume are discussions of racialization, migration, colonialism, and labor. 

In addition to the special issue, the journal features a lecture delivered by the Nobel laureate José Saramago on the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna. Saramago’s text, here published in English for the first time, is introduced by Ingrid D. Rowland, a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. The volume also includes scholarly articles on Fernando Pessoa and on the Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues. 

The publication of Ocean Crossings is supported in part by “The Colour of Labour – The Racialized Lives of Migrants,” funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Advanced Grant No. 695573 – PI Cristiana Bastos). 

Ocean Crossings is volume 33 of Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies (PLCS), an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal edited by Mario Pereira and Anna Klobucka and published semi-annually by Tagus Press in the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. 

The open access version of Ocean Crossings (PLCS 33), hosted by the UMass Dartmouth Claire T. Carney Library, is available here.

About the Author:

 André Nóvoa (PhD, Royal Holloway, 2014) is a geographer who previously trained as an historian and anthropologist. He is currently working on the ERC “The Colour of Labour” project, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. 

Book Details

• Title: Ocean Crossings
• Author: André Nóvoa (Editor)
• Series: Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies
• Publisher: ‎Tagus Press; 1st edition
• Date of Publication: May 28, 2021
• Language: ‎English

Available @ Tagus Press & Amazon.com