Tamara Mitchell is a scholar of 20th- and 21st-century Latin American literatures and cultures. Her work examines the relationship among aesthetics, politics, and the literary tradition in the current epoch of neoliberal globalization, with a focus on Mexican and Central American narrative fiction. At UBC, Tamara is the faculty lead on the Sound and the Humanities Research Cluster.

Tamara received a Master of Arts in Spanish Literature at the University of Kansas (2009), following which she spent a year abroad as Assistant Professor of English Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, and taught for two years as a Lecturer of Spanish at Clemson University in South Carolina. She received a Ph.D. in Latin American Literatures from Indiana University, Bloomington (2019), where she conducted research abroad as a FLAS Fellow and Tinker recipient.

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 Novel Crises: Post-Nationalism, Neoliberalism, and Mexican and Central American Literature, which examines contemporary novels that represent and respond to burgeoning neoliberal globalization. In it, I analyze novels by Claudia Hernández, Roberto Bolaño, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Laury Leite, Valeria Luiselli, 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.

View website for PDFs of peer-reviewed publications

Articles

“From Ratiocination to Globalization: Poe, Borges, Bolaño and the Complot of the novela negra mexicana.” CR: The New Centennial Review 21.3 (December 2021): 105-33

“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, Summer 2022.

“La Llorona, from Plaintive to Plaintiff: Accessing Rights in Neoliberal Globalization,” Cry Baby, eds. Norma Elia Cantú and Kathleen Alcalá, Trinity UP, Forthcoming, Spring 2023.

“Tronando con el Partido: Untranslatability and Hemispheric Parity in Horacio Castellanos Moya,” Central American Literature as World Literature, ed. Sophie Esch (submission accepted January 2022), Bloomsbury Academic World Literature Series.

Other: Encyclopedia Entries, Critical Introductions, Translations

“The Regional Novel and the Novel of the Mexican Revolution on Common Ground.” 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. November 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.

Edited Volume

Co-editor (with Amanda M. Smith, UC Santa Cruz), Latin American Literary Aurality special issue, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos (proposal accepted January 2022). Preceded by Listening with the Eyes Conference and Workshop.

“Reading with the Ears: The Sounds of Violence in Contemporary Latin American Literature,” SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2022-24, $46,900

“Sound Studies and the Humanities Research Cluster,” Public Humanities Hub, University of British Columbia, 2022-24, $16,000

“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

Currently accepting graduate students for supervision.