Piers Armstrong (PhD in Romance Literature and Linguistics, UCLA) is a Brazilianist and a Latin American generalist, with a broad base in language instruction, cultural and literary studies, and critical thinking. He has taught various combinations of Portuguese, Spanish and French language and literatures, academic English, and general ed seminars at UCLA, USC, Dartmouth College, UC Irvine and Cal State LA, and at federal and state universities in Brazil. His research covers several threads: (i) translation and the reception of texts; (ii) the rhetorical relations between aesthetic, ethical and material arguments; (iii) the evolution of "Black Atlantic" identities, particularly in Bahia, Brazil; (iv) language teaching and enrollment patterns; (v) comparative critical thinking paradigms from social sciences and humanities.