Ricardo Duarte Filho

Ricardo Duarte Filho is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research engages Latin American cultural studies at the intersection of environmental humanities, ecocriticism, critical race theory, critical Indigenous studies, and visual culture. His work is particularly concerned with the ways in which histories of extractivism and racial capitalism have shaped—and continue to shape—ecological and social landscapes in Brazil and the broader Americas.

He is currently completing a book manuscript which develops a multiscalar analysis of the entanglements between extractivism, settler colonialism, and racialization in Brazil. The project examines how Black and Indigenous bodies have historically been rendered as fungible raw matter within extractivist economies, and how these logics persist in shaping environmental injustice today. At the same time, the book foregrounds the work of contemporary Brazilian artists and writers who challenge extractivist paradigms and envision alternative ecological futures grounded in land-based relations and anticolonial worldmaking.

In parallel, he is developing a new research project that engages environmental justice and disability studies to theorize what he tentatively calls “colonial body burden.” This concept connects the scientific notion of body burden—the accumulation of toxic substances in the human body due to environmental exposure—with the enduring structures of settler colonialism in Latin America. By foregrounding non-lethal but chronic harms such as respiratory illness, endocrine disruption, and reproductive damage, the project examines how toxic exposure operates as a racializing force, transforming air, soil, and water into mediums of dispossession and environmental violence.

Ricardo is the co-author of Inúteis, frívolos, e distantes: à procura dos dândis (Rio de Janeiro: Mauad X, 2019), and his scholarly writing has appeared in venues such as the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Contracampo: Brazilian Journal of Communication, and the Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023).

• Ph.D. Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures, New York University, 2024
• M.A. Comunicação e Cultura, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2018
• B.A. Cinema e Audiovisual, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, 2015