Dr. Steven Butterman biography
An internationally recognized scholar of Brazilian literary and cultural studies and a tenured full professor at the University of Miami, Dr. Steven F. Butterman has published extensively in the areas of gender studies, cultural studies, immigration and queer diasporic studies, literary studies and queer theory. His first book came out in 2005 with San Diego State University Press. Perversions on Parade: Brazilian Literature of Transgression and Postmodern Anti-Aesthetics in Glauco Mattoso analyzes “marginal” cultural production under dictatorship, specifically examining the motif of homosexuality and its repression and regulation under Brazil’s most recent military dictatorship (1964-1985). Butterman’s second book, published in Portuguese with a major scholarly press in São Paulo, Brazil in 2012 (SJT Saúde, Educação, Cultura e Editora & nVersos), titled (In)Visibilidade vigilante: representações midiáticas da maior parada gay do planeta, roughly translates to English as “Witnessing (In)Visibility: Journalistic Representations of the Largest Gay Pride Parade on the Planet.” The monograph focuses on portrayals of the São Paulo LGBT Pride Parade in popular media outlets within Brazil, attempting to more productively understand if not reconcile the following daunting contradiction: While Brazil sets the “stage” for the largest gay pride parade on the planet, it is also the country where the largest number of hate crimes perpetrated against LGBT-identified citizens is committed. In 2021, Butterman published a third book, titled Queering & Querying the Paradise of Paradox: LGBT+ Language, New Media & Visual Cultures in Modern-Day Brazil, examining recent sociopolitical developments in the gay rights movement. The book contains chapters devoted to careful analysis of the discourses of NGOs and governmental agencies established to promote human rights for sexual minorities in Brazil. My next project will focus on identity formation of LGBT Brazilians who have migrated to South Florida, a collaborative project with colleagues from the University of São Paulo and the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Butterman serves as Full Professor of Portuguese and Gender & Sexuality Studies and direct the Portuguese Language Program since 2000, where he has taught Portuguese language courses and Brazilian literary and cultural studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami. In addition, he served as Director of the Gender & Sexuality Studies (GSS) Program for a three-year term, during which a steering committee he led founded the minor in LGBTQ Studies at the University of Miami in 2011.
Named the Richard E. Greenleaf Chair and Distinguished Visiting Professor in Latin American Studies at Tulane University, Butterman was Scholar in Residence in spring 2016. He has also held visiting teaching / scholar residency posts at Middlebury College, the University of São Paulo, and Unilasalle in Canoas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where he was invited by the Graduate Program in Social Memory and Cultural Heritage to teach a seminar on “Brazilian Culture, Gender Studies, and Human Rights.”
Prof. Butterman has delivered over 45 invited talks and keynote addresses at universities throughout Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States and dozens of academic conference presentations throughout the world.
Having earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000, Butterman is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in 2002 and Summer Seminar in 2010 and a winner of the Brazilian International Press Award, Provost's Excellence in Teaching Award, and the 2004 University of Miami Scholarly and Creative Activity Award, he has published articles on a wide range of topics, focusing on transnational LGBTQ+ studies, gender and feminist studies in the cultural contexts of a variety of Lusophone countries on three continents: Portuguese-Speaking Africa, South America (Brazil) and Portugal with particular specializations in 19th, 20th, and 21st century Luso-Afro-Brazilian Literature and Culture, Contemporary Brazilian Poetry and Music, and LGBTQ studies.
In addition to his academic and administrative work, Butterman has served as an expert witness in asylum cases involving homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and domestic violence in Brazil, Estonia, and Honduras. In summer 2019, he was invited to teach a 20-hour seminar at Unilsalle in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, a course co-sponsored by the university’s Law School, Political Science Department, and International Relations Program on the topic of U.S. asylum practices, human rights, and LGBTQ issues in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Awarded the Fulbright award to Brazil for academic year 2021-2022, a highly selective grant made possible by the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and U.S. Congress, administered through the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Butterman spent summer 2022 in fellowship as a Fulbright Visiting Professor in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities at the University of São Paulo. Due to the successful grant period, he was recently appointed (January 2024) by the Institute of International Education (IIE) as Fulbright U.S. Scholar Alumni Ambassador for 2024 – 26.