Pamela is a Ph.D. Candidate in Hispanic Studies at the University of British Columbia. She holds a MA in World Languages from West Virginia University and a BA in Spanish Philology from the University of Costa Rica. Her research examines how 20th and 21st Central American and Mexican fiction contests humanitarian and environmental crises in the neoliberal present. At the intersection of sound studies, feminist theory and migration studies, her work addresses the state’s unmet promises to protect its citizens, silencing traditionally underrepresented groups (e.g., Indigenous communities, migrants, and women). Her dissertation project is tentatively titled “Literary Listening and the Unmet Promises of the State: the Archive of Central American and Mexican Narrative Fiction.”

Before joining the doctoral program, Pamela worked as a language and culture instructor at Peace Corps Costa Rica. She has taught Spanish as a Language Lab Instructor at Macalester College, Minnesota and as a lecturer at West Virginia University. She currently works as a Graduate Research Assistant for the Sound and the Humanities Research Cluster and as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at FHIS. When Pamela is not working, she’s singing and finding new venues to dance salsa in Vancouver.

Interests

• Contemporary Central America and Mexican Literature and Culture
• Feminist theory
• Sound studies
• Intersectionality
• Migration

Book Review. The Cry of the Senses: Listening to Latinx and Caribbean Poetics (Duke UP, 2020) by Ren Ellis Neyra. Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures.

“Sonoridades de posguerra en Baile con serpientes (1996) de Horacio Castellanos Moya.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 57 no. 3, 2023, p. 477-498. Project Muse, https://doi.org/10.1353/rvs.2023.a924209.

Cordula and Gunter Paetzold Fellowship

Graduate supervisor: Dr. Tamara Mitchell

“Sonoridades de posguerra centroamericana en Baile con serpientes (1996) de Horacio Castellanos Moya” (Central
American Postwar Sounds in Dance with Snakes (1996) by Horacio Castellanos Moya.”) Listening with the Eyes the Sounds of Latin American Literature Conference, The University of British Columbia, October 2022.

“Letra, sonido e imagen: hacia una nueva ética a través de El mal de la taiga (2012)” (Lyrics, sound and image: towards a new ethics in The Taiga Syndrome (2012).”) Polarización socioambiental y rivalidad entre grandes potencias, LASA, May, 2022.

Speaker at International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women Roundtable, The University of British Columbia, November 2021 (invited).

Poem “Covered Teeth .” DiHuCon Discomfort 2021, University of Alberta. February 2021.

“Los ritmos latinoamericanos como estrategia de resistencia en la ópera La Ruta de su Evasión (2017) de Abya Yala y Carlos Castro (“Latin American Rhythms as a Resistance Strategy in the Opera Path of Avoidance (2017) by Abya Yala and Carlos Castro.”) Crossroads Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference, University of Georgia. February 2020.

“El pasado colonial y la escritura ilustrada en Coloniaje Romántico (1923) de Angélica Palma.” (“The colonial past and the official writing in Romantic Colonial Times (1923) by Angélica Palma.”) 2019 KFLC: The Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Conference, University of Kentucky, April 2019.

“Costa Rica bajo la lupa en la serie de relatos Cothnejo-Fishy by Carmen Lyra.” (Costa Rica under scrutiny in Cothnejo-Fishy short stories by Carmen Lyra”.) Crossing Borders and Building Bridges, Expanding the limits of social transformation from students’ activism and creative spaces art and literature, ILASA 38 Student Conference-Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin. March 2018.