I am Eraldo Souza dos Santos, a historian and philosopher interested in the history of ideas, the invention of traditions, and the politics of translation. In my current project, I trace the history of the idea of civil disobedience to shed critical light on contemporary anti-protest rhetoric. In it, I explore how the history of protest has been written and rewritten to delegitimize Black resistance. My articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the Annual Review of Law and Ethics, the South Atlantic Quarterly, and The Tocqueville Review. 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. One of our poems has appeared in Poetry, and another is forthcoming in The Southern Review. “She Is There,” a piece stemming from this project, appeared in Best Small Fictions 2025. I have also been selected by Yaddo, the Blue Mountain Center, the KHN Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center to work on this project.

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

Pronouns: they/them/theirs