A native of Brazil, Ana Maria Lima specializes in Portuguese language and literature with an emphasis on Brazilian culture. Her scholarship includes works on multimedia approaches to language acquisition and pedagogy. She teaches beginners, intermediate and advanced Portuguese language classes at the University of Chicago and directs the Portuguese language program. She has been working in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures for 30 years. Ms. Lima is currently working on redesigning existing courses to include more unscripted, authentic materials with a variety of accompanying activities aiming to enhance the linguistic abilities and cultural awareness of students of Portuguese by providing opportunities for structured discussion, analysis, and exploration of issues relevant to language use in academic, professional, and social settings.
Scholarships, Grants and Awards
- Higher Education Professor of the Year, American Organization of Teachers of Portuguese, Aug 2023
- Exploratory Teaching Grant: Portuguese for Spanish Speakers: A Course Redesign for the 21st Century, Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning, Sept 2023
- College Curricular Innovation Grant, with Nene Lozada, Juliano Saccomani and Claudia Quevedo Webb, to develop a Virtual Reality project for Spanish and Portuguese courses, Nov 2020
- Language Pedagogy Innovation Initiative Grant to develop the course Culture of the Lusophone World, CLC, UChicago, July 2020
- Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) Partnership Project two-year grant, administered by Michigan State University and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Nov 2019
- Language Pedagogy Innovation Initiative (LPII) Grant - Course Development Project to develop course materials for the Intermediate Portuguese class, CLC, UChicago, July-Aug 2019
- Chicago Arts Grant for the VII Illinois Portuguese Language Connection, Feb 2019
- American Organization of Teachers of Portuguese Award for Program/Educational Initiative for the Illinois Portuguese Language Connection, April 2017
- Chicago Course Connection Grant for the V Illinois Portuguese Course Connection, April 2017
- Janel M. Mueller Award for Excellence in Pedagogy, Humanities Division, June 2015
Publications
- “The Portuguese Language Working Group -- A Successful Partnership," with Raquel Goebel. Chapter for the book Sharing LCTLs in Higher Education: Collaboration and Innovation, edited by Emily Heidrich Uebel, Angelika Kraemer and Lucca Giupponi, Routledge, 2023
Recent Courses in RLL
- PORT 10100 Elementary Portuguese I (Autumn 2016)
- PORT 10200 Elementary Portuguese II (Winter 2017)
- PORT 12200 Portuguese for Spanish Speakers (Spring 2017, Autumn 2017, Autumn 2019, Spring 2020)
- PORT 14100 Portuguese for Romance Language Speakers (Winter 2018, Winter 2019, Winter 2020)
- PORT 14500 Portuguese for the Professions: Intensive Business Portuguese (Spring 2019)
- PORT 20100 Intermediate Portuguese (Autumn 2016, Autumn 2017, Autumn 2018, Autumn 2019, Autumn 2020, Autumn 2021, Autumn 2022)
- PORT 20200 Advanced Portuguese (Winter 2017, Winter 2018, Winter 2019
- PORT 20500 Cultura do Mundo Lusófono (Winter 2021, Winter 2023, Winter 2024)
- PORT 20600 Composição e Conversação Avançada (Winter 2020, Winter 2021, Winter 2022, Winter 2023, Winter 2024)
- PORT 21500 Curso de Aperfeiçoamento (Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2023, Spring 2024)
- RLLT 48800 Foreign Language Acquisition, Research and Teaching (Autumn 2018, Autumn 2023)