About
My research and teaching center on 20th- and 21st-century Latin American literatures and cultures. My work examines the relationship between aesthetics, politics, and the literary tradition in the current epoch of neoliberal globalization, with a focus on Mexican and Central American narrative fiction.
I received a dual BA in Spanish and English Literature from Washburn University (2006) and a Master of Arts in Spanish Literature at the University of Kansas (2009). Following the M.A., I spent a year abroad as Assistant Professor of English Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, and I taught for two years as a Lecturer of Spanish at Clemson University in South Carolina. I received a Ph.D. in Latin American Literatures from Indiana University, Bloomington, where I conducted research abroad as a FLAS Fellow and Tinker recipient.
Research
Interests
- Contemporary Mexican Literature and Culture
- Contemporary Central American Literature and Culture
- Neoliberalism, Globalization, (Post-)National Politics
- Political Philosophy, Critical Theory
- Border and Diaspora Studies
- Digital Humanities, Sound Studies
- Latina/o/x Studies
I specialize in 20th- and 21st-century Mexican and Central American narrative fiction, as well as in broad comparative areas that reach into other disciplines and traditions: Latina/o Studies, critical theory, political philosophy, and border and diaspora studies. My research is animated by questions of political agency, economic precarity, and the violence that obtains throughout waning national modernity, as well as by the ways in which literature shapes, critiques, and indexes burgeoning neoliberal globalization.
Current Projects
Book Manuscript
My current book project, Neoliberal Encounters: Latin American Literature in the Age of Technological Globalization, studies and sets up a series of “neoliberal encounters” in its examination of 21st-century Mexican and Central American literature—produced both domestically and in the diaspora. Encounters are both destructive and generative. They may be sites of confrontation, change, synthesis, or revelation. They are both temporal and spatial, and occur across distinct genres and media. I read narrative works by Roberto Bolaño, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Claudia Hernández, Laury Leite, Guadalupe Nettel, and Cristina Rivera Garza as sites of such encounters, and I attend to the ways in which politics, economics, ethics, and aesthetics become entangled in the age of neoliberal globalization. Along the way, my project engages with diverse theoretical perspectives, such as Critical Race Theory, Migration and Diaspora Studies, and Sound Studies.
I am also developing a second book project, tentatively titled Of Maíces and Milpas: Corn as Culture and Commodity in Greater Mexico and Central America.
Articles in Progress
“For Whom the Bell Tolls: Religious Colonialism and Sonic Refusal in Arguedas, Asturias, and Yáñez.”
“Violencia y alienación social en El Salvador: El arma en el hombre como Bildungsroman neoliberal.”
“Rancière and the Paradox of Politics: Mexico, Central America, and the Long 1968 in Retrospect.”
“Dead Matter: A Historical Materialist Approach to Literary Corpses in W.G. Sebald & Oscar Zeta Acosta.”
“A Tale of Two Genres: The Duæling Discourses of Luis Rafael Sánchez’s Quíntuples.”
Publications
Articles
“A Narrative Vaivén: Lucha libre and the Modern Nation Unready-to-hand in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s La sirvienta y el luchador.” (Accepted November 2020, Modern Language Notes)
“From Ratiocination to Globalization: Poe, Borges, Bolaño and the Complot of the novela negra mexicana.” (Accepted August 2020, CR: The New Centennial Review)
“Broken Bodies, Broken Nations: Roberto Bolaño on Neoliberal Logic and (Un)Mediated Violence.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 55.1 (forthcoming, March 2021).
“Escatología y marginalización en la literatura andina: Las porosas fronteras sociopolíticas en Los ríos profundos de José María Arguedas,” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 43.2 (May 2020): 425-47.
“Geopoetics, Geopolitics, and Violence: (Un)Mapping Daniel Alarcón’s Lost City Radio,” Latin American Perspectives 46.5 (September 2019): 186-201.
“Carving Place out of Non-Place: Luis Rafael Sánchez’s ‘La guagua aérea’ and Post-National Space,” Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana 47.1 (May 2018): 275-92.
Book Chapters
“Migration and Diaspora: Central American Literature Beyond the Isthmus,” Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context, MLA Anthology, Eds. Mónica Albizúrez and Gloria E. Chacón, Forthcoming Spring 2021.
“La Llorona, from Plaintive to Plaintiff: Accessing Rights in Neoliberal Globalization,” Cry Baby, eds. Norma Elia Cantú and Kathleen Alcalá (Accepted December 2020)
Other: Encyclopedia Entries, Critical Introductions, Translations
“The Latin American Telluric Novel and the Mexican Revolution.” Oxford Handbook of the Latin American Novel. Proposal accepted, under contract, May 2020. Co-authored with Amanda M. Smith, UC Santa Cruz, eds. Ignacio López-Calvo and Juan E De Castro.
“Natalia Almada: The Sound & the Image,” Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures 1.1 (September 2016): 129-34, ed. Jonathan Risner: Indiana University Press.
Translations of poetry by Conceição Evaristo (Brazilian Portuguese), Revista Hiedra 1.1 (Fall 2013): 66-68.
Awards
Digital Humanities Summer Institute Scholarship, University of Victoria, Canada, $1200, 2021
SSHRC Exchange Arts International Conference Travel Grant (Guadalajara, Mexico), $2000, 2020-2021
Hampton New Faculty Research Grant, University of British Columbia, $10,000, 2019-2021
Faculty of Arts Adaptation Research Assistant Grant, $3000, 2020
Tinker Field Research Grant, archival research on Clarice Lispector in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Indiana University, $1500, 2014
Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, Portuguese language study in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Indiana University, $4425, 2014
Graduate Supervision
Currently accepting graduate students for supervision.