Mario Higa holds a Ph.D. in Luso-Brazilian Literature from the University of Texas at Austin. At Middlebury, Mario teaches Portuguese language and Luso-Brazilian literature/culture courses. As a researcher, he is primarily interested in literary hermeneutics applied to modern Luso-Brazilian literature. Some of the topics Mario teaches in his courses and reflects on his scholarly works include History and its literary representation, critical methods of reading literary texts, and rhetoric and the nature of meaning.