Isabel Sobral Campos
Teaching Professor in English; Undergraduate Program Director
Isabel Sobral Campos is a poet, translator, scholar, publisher, and teacher. She is a former NU Writing Center Director and is currently serving as the Undergraduate Program Director in English. She is the author of The Optogram of the Mind is a Carnation, selected for the Futurepoem 2023 Other Futures Award, as well as two other full-length poetry books. She has published several chapbooks, with poetry appearing in the Boston Review, Black Sun Lit, and the Brooklyn Rail. Her poems have also been included in the anthologies BAX 2018: Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University Press) and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World (Spuyten Duyvil). In 2024, her collaborative translation of Salette Tavares’s LEX ICON was published by Ugly Duckling Presse. Her scholarly work has appeared in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, The Emily Dickinson Journal, symplokē, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and elsewhere. She is the editor of the scholarly essay collection, Ecopoetics and the Global Landscape (Lexington Books, 2019). She is the co-founder and editor Sputnik & Fizzle press. At Northeastern, she has taught Advanced Writing in the Technical Professions, First-Year Writing, Global Literatures, Creative Writing, and Poetry Workshop. Alongside Professor Jessica Linker, she co-directs Northeastern’s experiential letterpress studio, Huskiana Press.
Academic Publications:
— Ecopoetics and the Global Landscape: Critical Essays, edited by Isabel Sobral Campos. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019.
— “The Ecology of Kandinsky’s Abstraction: A Trembling World of Beings and Things.” Symplokē, vol. 26, no. 1-2, 2018, pp. 237-250.
— “Nature’s Deterioration: Pascal’s Experiments with the Vacuum Revisited.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE), vol. 25, no. 2, 2018, pp. 238–256.
— “The Haunted House of Nature—Immanence’s Infinity.” The Emily Dickinson Journal, vol 25, no.1, 2016, pp. 57-82.
— “Futureless Invention: Frampton’s Finite-Infinite Film.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 33, no. 3, 2016, pp. 1-21.
— “Grimonprez’s Chimera.” Evental Aesthetics, vol. 1, no. 2, 2012, pp. 81-87.
— “Introduction: Trans-National Ecopoetics.” Ecopoetics and the Global Landscape: Critical Essays, edited by Isabel Sobral Campos. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019, pp. ix-xvii.
— “The Ecology of Metaphor: Will Alexander’s Exobiology as Goddess.” Ecopoetics and the Global Landscape: Critical Essays, edited by Isabel Sobral Campos. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019, pp. 225-252.
Poetry:
—The Optogram of the Mind is a Carnation, Winner of the Futurepoem 2023 Other Awards, September 2, 2025.
— How to Make Words of Rubble. Blue Figure Press, 2020.
–Your Person Doesn’t Belong to You. Milwaukee: Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2018.
–Autobiographical Ecology. Ottawa, Canada: Above/Ground Press, 2019.
–You Will Be Made of Stone. Chicago: Dancing Girl Press, 2018.
–Material. New York: No Dear/Small Anchor Press, 2015.
— “If selves are thoughts.” in BAX2018: Best American Experimental Writing. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2018.
Translations:
–Tavares, Salette. LEX ICON. Translated by Isabel Sobral Campos and Kristofer Petersen-Overton. Brooklyn, Ugly Duckling Presse, May 2024.
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Education
PhD in Comparative Literature, The City University of New York
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Contact
617-373-2771 i.sobralcampos@northeastern.edu iscampos.com -
Address
417 Holmes Hall
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115 -
Office Hours
Friday 10:15 am-1:15 pm
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Associations
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Offers writing instruction for students in the College of Engineering and the College of Computer and Information Science. Students practice and reflect on writing in professional, public, and academic genres—such as technical reports, progress reports, proposals, instructions, presentations, and technical reviews—relevant to technical professions and individual student goals. In a workshop setting, offers students an opportunity to evaluate a wide variety of sources and develop expertise in audience analysis, critical research, peer review, and revision.
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Creative Writing
ENGL 2700
Gives the developing writer an opportunity to practice writing various forms of both poetry and prose. Features in-class discussion of student work.
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Global Literature to 1500
ENGL 1700
Introduces students to the ancient and classical literatures of Greece, Rome, and the eastern Mediterranean, as well as other premodern literatures in translation.
First-Year Writing
ENGW 1111
Designed for students to study and practice writing in a workshop setting. Students read a range of texts in order to describe and evaluate the choices writers make and apply that knowledge to their own writing and explore how writing functions in a range of academic, professional, and public contexts. Offers students an opportunity to learn how to conduct research using primary and secondary sources; how to write for various purposes and audiences in multiple genres and media; and how to give and receive feedback, to revise their work, and to reflect on their growth as writers.
