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Across Continents employs Goan literary subjectivity as epistemology to critique a specific limitation of postcolonial thought, one that does not account for the situations or afterlife of Portuguese colonialism. Employing various novels, R. Benedito Ferrão considers the relationship between Portuguese and British colonialisms through the displacement of Goan characters betwixt Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. The experiences of these figures in dealing with the processes of nation, statecraft, and political intrigue at various historical junctures offer a comparative understanding of the tumultuous conditions of postcoloniality in the making of marginalized subjectivity across continents.
In examining the mobility and diversity of Goan experiences as represented in works by Salman Rushdie, M. G. Vassanji, Roger King, and Margaret Mascarenhas, this book calls into question limits of citizenship, nationality, and notions of belonging. Ferrão centers seemingly minor figures to exemplify the effects of colonial and postcolonial changes that connect diverse geopolities.
Purchase Book: https://press.umich.edu/Books/A/Across-Continents3
Author Bio
R. Benedito Ferrão is Associate Professor of English and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies at William & Mary, with affiliations in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. His honors include being named University Professor for Teaching Excellence (2025-28), the Jinlan Liu Award for Research in APIA Studies (2024-27), a Coco Faculty Fellowship (2026-27), a Fulbright-Nehru Research Award (2019-20), and fellowships with the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at Bayreuth University.
Ferrão earned his Ph.D. at Birkbeck College, University of London, and has taught at UCLA, BITS Pilani Goa, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, and William & Mary. His research and teaching focus on Afro-Asiatic connections across Portuguese and British post/colonial histories and on diasporic fiction engaging race, gender, and sexuality, an interest closely tied to his curatorial work with artists such as Karishma D'Souza, Angela Ferrão, and Maria Vanessa de Sa, including the exhibition and book Goa/Portugal/Mozambique: The Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar (Fundação Oriente, 2017).
Ferrão's first monograph, Across Continents: Writing Goans, Making Worlds (University of Michigan Press, 2026), joins his children's book The Girl Who was the Color of Nothing: A Children's Story for Adults (The Uninvited, 2026), illustrated by Maria Vanessa de Sa. His collaboration with the artist Vamona Navelcar featured in the exhibition and book Goa/Portugal/Mozambique: The Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar (Fundação Oriente, 2017); that retrospective would be the last time Navelcar's art was seen publicly during his lifetime.
