I am a scholar, researcher, collaborator, and librarian of data, literature & space. I use spatial data to generate new literary research questions. I have taught in the Department of English at New York University and am now part of Research Data Services at Columbia University Libraries.
My scholarly activity circles around the way literature and space are intertwined, specifically in American novels of the 20th and 21st centuries. I am particularly interested in novels that describe the experience of geographical (and, additionally, affective) change brought on by immigration or migration. I have used the tool I wrote, NYWalker, to collect geographical data on the novels I investigate.
My scholarly work relies on collaboration and process, both in and outside the classroom. I work best as part of a team that sees its work as one of experimentation and workshopping towards a project.
I grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts. I defended my dissertation “The Site of the Novel” in January 2014, and I received my PhD from the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago in June 2014.
After living (and teaching) in Europe for six years, I was Assistant Professor / Faculty Fellow in the Department of English at New York University until 2018. Since then, I have been the Research Data Librarian in Research Data Services at Columbia University Libraries.
My surname is Portuguese. That means it is alphabetized under “S,” and my name should appear as “Sá Pereira, Moacir P. de” in bibliographies, indices, etc.
