Associate Professor / Norman and Dorothy Eliason Scholar
2002, Ph.D., English, The Pennsylvania State University
1995, M.A., English, Purdue University
1993, B.A., English with Spanish Minor, Le Moyne College
Bio
My research areas include all things Latinx, including Chicanx and Latinx and cultural production, Hispanic transnational literatures, Caribbean historical fiction, Visual Rhetorics, and Testimonio. Generally, I am interested in what and why: what representations of Latin@ experience look like and why authors have made the specific generic, linguistic, and visual choices that ultimately appear in their work. My first book, Chicana/o and Latina/o Fiction: The New Memory of Latinidad (U of Illinois Press, 2016); received awards from the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies (2018) and the Modern Language Association (2017). All of the texts I discuss are from the contemporary period and the chapters are organized by pairing books written by authors from two of these four major Hispanic descended groups within the US: Cubans, Dominicans, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans. My current book project, Cartographies of Erasure: Latinx Speculative Narrative since 1992 argues Latinx cultural production creates a decolonial cartography of erased bodies since 1492: BIPOC peoples, other-than-human animals, and topographic (air, and, water). The book centers the stories — told, retold, and imagined — of the erased. In shorter scholarship, my articles and book chapters appear in venues including Chiricú Journal, CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, and Symbolism: An International Journal of Critical Aesthetics. Book chapters appear in these edited volumes: Latinidad at the Crossroads: Insights into Latinx Identity in the 21st Century and Latinx Environmentalisms: Justice, Place, & the Decolonial.
Publications:
- “Encarnaciónes Cubanos: Elías Miguel Muñoz and the Queering of Latino Canon.” Latinidad at the Crossroads: Insights into Latinx Identity in the 21st Century, edited by A. E. Gerke and Luisa María Rodríguez Gonzalez. Brill-Rodopi, pp.108-134. 2021.
- “Translating Silence into Story: An Interview with Angie Cruz.” Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 65-76. 2020.
- “Postcards from the Edges of Haiti: The Latinx Ecocriticism of Mayra Montero’s In the Palm of Darkness.” Latinx Environmentalisms: Justice, Place, & the Decolonial, edited by S. Wald, D. Vázquez, S. Ray., and P. Ybarra, Temple UP, pp. 227-249. 2019.
- “This is How You Lose It: Navigating Dominicanidad in Junot Díaz’s Drown.” Junot Díaz and the Decolonial Imaginary, edited by Monica Hanna, Jennifer H. Vargas, and José David Saldívar, Duke UP, pp. 189-225. 2016.
- “Because Place Still Matters: Mapping Ethno-nationalism in Bodega Dreams.” CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 152-185. 2015.
Teaching Awards
Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teacher Award, University of South Florida, 2017.
Awards
- Florida Education Fund Award for Outstanding Support of FEF Fellows
- McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program/FEF, 2021. Status of Latinos (SOL) Faculty Award for Community Engagement, (SOL) Advisory Committee, USF, 2019.
- National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) Best Book Award, 2018.
- MLA Book Award in US Latina/o & Chicana/o Literary & Cultural Studies, 2017.
- Outstanding Research Achievement Award, University of South Florida, 2017.
Courses Taught:
- ENGL 390: Studies in Literary Topics: “Misbehaving Bodies: Dis/Ease, Dis/Order, & Dys/Topia in Latinx Fiction and Film
- ENGL 164: Introduction to Latina/o/x Studies