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 (2019), 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
- Sound Studies
- Latina/o/x Studies, Latinocanadá
Current Projects
I am finalizing a monograph entitled The Nation Under Erasure: Neoliberal Aesthetics in Central American and Mexican Literature, which examines contemporary novels that represent and respond to burgeoning neoliberal globalization. In it, I analyze novels by Roberto Bolaño, Laury Leite, Valeria Luiselli, Emiliano Monge, Horacio Castellanos Moya, and Carol Zardetto as works that boast a post-national and neoliberal aesthetics. I attend to how each novel, in distinct ways, meditates on and denaturalizes the notion of “national” literatures, and I examine how politics, economics, ethics, and aesthetics become entangled in post-national narrative fiction. Along the way, my project engages with diverse theoretical perspectives, such as Critical Race Theory, Migration and Diaspora Studies, continental philosophy, and Sound Studies.
I am working on a second book project, tentatively titled Sounds of the Capitalocene: Violence and Aurality in Latin American Narrative Fiction, that considers how 20th- and 21st-century authors turn to aurality in narrative fiction as a means of critiquing and responding to exclusionary politics, economic inequalities, gendered violence, and ecological devastation of the neoliberal present. In it, I read fiction by authors such as Augustín Yáñez, Ana Castillo, Yuri Herrera, Emiliano Monge, and Guadalupe Nettel, whose work, I argue, engages with sound and silence as a means of grappling with the inequalities and violence of advanced capitalism.
Publications
View website for PDFs of peer-reviewed publications
Articles
“From Ratiocination to Globalization: Poe, Borges, Bolaño and the Complot of the novela negra mexicana.” Forthcoming, CR: The New Centennial Review
“A Narrative Vaivén: Lucha libre and the Modern Nation Unready-to-hand in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s La sirvienta y el luchador.” Modern Language Notes 136.2 (March 2021): 270-91.
“Broken Bodies, Broken Nations: Roberto Bolaño on Neoliberal Logic and (Un)Mediated Violence.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 55.1 (March 2021): 189-211.
“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, Fall 2022.
“La Llorona, from Plaintive to Plaintiff: Accessing Rights in Neoliberal Globalization,” Cry Baby, eds. Norma Elia Cantú and Kathleen Alcalá, Trinity UP, Forthcoming, 2022.
Other: Encyclopedia Entries, Critical Introductions, Translations
“The Latin American Telluric Novel and the Mexican Revolution.” Oxford Handbook of the Latin American Novel. Co-authored with Amanda M. Smith, UC Santa Cruz, eds. Ignacio López-Calvo and Juan E De Castro. Forthcoming, 2022.
“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
“Latinocanadá: Writing from the Other Americas,” SSHRC Explore Grant, 2022, $6000
Work Learn International Undergraduate Researcher Award (WLIURA), 2021, University of British Columbia, $8000
Faculty of Arts Undergraduate Researcher Award (AURA), 2021, University of British Columbia, $3000
SSHRC Exchange Arts International Conference Travel Grant (Guadalajara, Mexico), 2020-2021, $2000
Hampton New Faculty Research Grant, University of British Columbia, 2019-2021 $10,000
Faculty of Arts Adaptation Research Assistant Grant, 2020, $3000
Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) Fellowship. US Department of Education, 2015, $15,000
Tinker Field Research Grant, archival research on Clarice Lispector in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 2014, Indiana University, $1500
Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, Portuguese language study in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. 2014, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Indiana University, $4425
Graduate Supervision
Currently accepting graduate students for supervision.