Luiz Fernando Valente, from Rio de Janeiro, was educated in Brazil and the United States. He is the author of more than eighty titles in Brazilian literature, comparative literature, and Brazilian intellectual history. Professor Valente is co-founder and co-editor of Brasil/Brazil: A Journal of Brazilian Literature, is a former consulting editor for Latin American Literature of The Explicator, and has been on editorial boards of several journals in the United States and Brazil, including Luso-Brazilian Review, Journal of Lusophone Studies, SOLETRAS, Aletria: Revista de Estudos de Literatura, ellipsis, and others. Professor Valente is a past President of the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA) and of the Northeastern Association of Brazilianists (NAB). He was Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil on two separate occasions and in spring of 2009 was named the Thomas Hawkins Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the US Military Academy (West Point). Professor Valente was Chair of the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from 2003 to 2012. He served as the Director of the Brown-in-Brazil Program from 1985 to 2018.