By Maggie Meegan | Reporter
Professors don’t just teach classes; many also conduct research outside of the classroom, like Dr. João Chaves, assistant professor of religion.
Chaves’ research is more than just a pastime, though. It’s won him awards like the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Dissertation Scholarship, according to the NABPRD website. More than that, it caught the attention of Netflix.
Chaves and his colleague Raimundo Barreto Jr. wrote an article that appeared in The Washington Post about a movement of specific streams of Christian nationalism in Brazil.
From there, a filmmaker reached out to Chaves about researching for a documentary film covering the nationalism movement in Brazil, and the passion was born.
“Through different means, including that piece, these documentary filmmakers kind of figured out what Raimundo and I were researching,” Chaves said.
Chaves was a part of a research team focusing on the Brazilian aspect of the documentary film titled “Apocalypse In The Tropics,” which is now streaming on Netflix.
Compared to the world of writing and publications, Chaves said he got to experience what it was like working with production crews and being a part of a story on streaming devices.
“It was very interesting to have a sip of that world and then seeing the documentary done afterwards … it has to be in some ways kind of reimagined to communicate things differently,” Chaves said.
After the fact, Chaves is still pushing himself out of his comfort zone by finding new ways to publish his work.
“I’m writing a short collection of poetry that I am uncomfortable doing because it is not my area,” Chaves said. “I am working with a couple of people who are kind of editing and giving feedback and all of that, and I’m enjoying it a lot.”
Chaves has been a professor at Baylor for three years and said he enjoyed the process of going through his PhD.
“For some people the PhD or the educational kind of track to be a teacher in my area or a scholar in my area is a means to an end in the sense that you struggle through it and then you get it,” Chaves said. “But for me, the process itself was very enjoyable.”
Inside the classroom, Chaves is greatly admired by his students in his church history course.
Katy senior Oliver Liu said he admires Chaves and has continued to build his relationship with him as a mentor and professor throughout his journey at Baylor.
“One thing I heard that I thought was really cool the other day was, ‘To love is to pay attention,’ and Dr. Chaves is a guy who pays attention,” Liu said. “He is a great teacher, but also he’s just super invested in our lives as students.”
