Degrees

BA English, University of North Carolina at Wilmington (summa cum laude)

MA British and American Literature, North Carolina State University

Bio

Geovani Ramírez is a Ph.D candidate and teaching fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he specializes in Multiethnic and Latinx literature. His dissertation explores the ways Mexican-heritage women writers use the topic of labor in their works to interrogate and re-shape notions of class, race, gender, culture, (trans)national identities, and citizenship.

While at UNC, Geovani has enjoyed working with UNC students in various capacities, including as a graduate research consultant for Latinx and Women’s and Gender Studies literature courses, sole instructor for ENGL 105 Composition and Rhetoric, ENGL 105i Writing in the Social Sciences, and courses in Women’s and Gender Studies and literature. From fall 2014 to spring 2018, Geovani worked as a writing coach at the UNC Writing Center, where he coached undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines on a wide range of writing genres and projects. He has also been an assistant writing coordinator for the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program since the summer of 2018.

Geovani was a graduate student fellow at the UNC Center for Faculty Excellence during the 2018-2019 academic year, and he joined the UNC Latina/o Studies Program as a graduate assistant in the spring of 2019.

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Awards

• Center for the Study of the American South Summer Research Grant, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2019
• Center for the Study of the American South Travel Grant, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2019.
• Lea/McLaurin Dissertation Completion Fellowship, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2018
• George Hills Harper Summer Research Fellowship, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2013

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Degrees

2009, MA Comparative Literature, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2005, BA Spanish, Goucher College

Bio

Rebecca Garonzik is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature. Her areas of specialization are twentieth and twenty-first century Latin American and Latinx literatures. She is currently completing her dissertation, “Eros Galvanized: Critical Intersections of Eroticism and Politics in Contemporary Latin American and Latina/o/x Literatures (1965-2011),” under the direction of Juan Carlos González Espitia. In addition to her research on socially committed literature, Rebecca has also published work on poetics and Foucauldian discourse analysis. She is the founding co-president of the Literatures of the Americas working group.

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Publications:

• “Beyond Marcuse: Guevara’s Influence on the Revolutionary Erotic in Julio Cortázar’s Libro de Manuel.” A Contracorriente 13.2 (Winter 2016): 1-24. Web. 8 March 2016.
• “Deconstructing Psychiatric Discourse and Idealized Madness in Cristina Rivera Garza’s Nadie me verá llorar.” Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana 43.1 (May 2014): 3-14.
• “‘To name that thing without a name’: Linking Poetry and the Child’s Voice in Sandra   Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street.” Letras Femeninas 37.2 (Winter 2011): 139-55.
• “Queering Feminism: Cristina Rivera Garza’s La cresta de Ilión and the Feminine Sublime.” Cuaderno Internacional de Estudios Humanísticos y Literatura 14 (Fall 2010): 45-56.
• “Permanencias de Juan Rulfo en la crítica contemporánea.” Rev. of Ecos y murmullos en la obra de Rulfo, Ed. Julio Moguel and Enrique Sáinz. Confluencia 24.2 (Spring 2009): 151-53.

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Awards

• Frankel Dissertation Fellowship
• Phi Beta Kappa
• Helen Carroll Shelley Prize in Romance Languages

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2013, BA Critical Studies (in English Cultures, Literatures, and Film) & Latin American Studies, University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire.

Bio

Emilio Taiveaho was born in Quito, Ecuador, to a Finnish Father and Ecuadorian Mother, and spent his childhood prehending—and being prehended by—the beatific and magnanimous Andes. A first-generation immigrant, Emilio moved to the United States to further his education, finishing his High School career in Winona, Minnesota, and graduating from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire in 2017. He is currently pursuing a PhD. in literature from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, where he specializes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry and poetics across the Américas, and is interested in the intersection of aesthetics, biopolitics, performance, and visual art.

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Awards

• 2017 – Present: Mellon Fellow

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

2017, BA Literature, BA Spanish, University of North Carolina Asheville

Bio

Marcy Pedzwater studies twentieth-century North and Latin American literature. Her current research interests include the intersections of race, gender, and colonialism/imperialism in the Americas. She is also interested in the function of memory, archive, and trauma in twentieth-century texts. She currently teaches Spanish 105.

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Degrees

2011, B.A. Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University

2012, M.A. History, Carnegie Mellon University

Bio

Mark Collins is a PhD student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He works in the fields of contemporary American and multi-ethnic literature and women’s and gender studies. His academic interests include: feminist theory, science and technology studies, critical race theory, and cultural studies. Mark is currently working on his dissertation project, called “Nuclear Reproduction: Race, Gender, and Reproductive Control in US Cold War Speculative Fiction,” which explores the relationship between the discourses of nuclear warfare and reproduction in literary and cultural texts from the decades spanning the Cold War period.

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Curriculum Vitae / Resume

Degrees

• 2013, M.A. English and Comparative Literature, UNC-Chapel Hill.
• 2008, B.A. English, George Mason University.

Bio

María J. Durán is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature and Graduate Assistant for the UNC Latina/o Studies Program. Her dissertation examines portrayals of pain in Latinx literature and the ways it can give birth to or elevate political consciousness to incite resistance and social protest in Latinx communities.

Durán has served as a guest blogger for UNC’s Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA), and she has published in the leading Chicana/o Studies Journal, Aztlán. She has taught ENGL 105, ENGL 105i Business, ENGL 129, WGST 233, and ENGL 364.  As a theatre artist, Durán co-directed a sold-out production of In the Heights(Spring 2017), staged at The ArtsCenter in Carrboro, NC. She was invited to share her theatre work at the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) Regional Arts Training in Charlotte, NC (Summer 2017). Recently, she directed a staged reading of Just Like Us, a play about undocumented youth by Karen Zacarías (March 2018). She currently serves on the PlayMakers Repertory Company Advisory Council.

Durán is an advocate for underrepresented minority education.  She has worked with The Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (MURAP) at UNC-Chapel Hill to assist talented underrepresented undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds in their pursuit of doctoral degrees. In Summer 2015, she received the UNC Graduate School’s Richard Bland Fellowship and interned with Juntos, a North Carolina State University cooperative extension program that helps Latinx students achieve higher education. She is also a Carolina Firsts Advocate for undergraduate students and serves on the advisory board for the Carolina Grad Student F1RSTS. In her spare time, Durán enjoys visiting coffeeshops, hot yoga, traveling, and spending time with her two pet bunnies. Click here to read about Durán’s decision to pursue graduate studies and what advice she has for prospective graduate students.

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Publications:

Refereed Journal Articles

• “Bodies That Should Matter: Chicana/o Farmworkers, Slow Violence, and the Politics of (In)visibility in Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, vol 42, no 1, 2017, pp. 45-71.

Other Publications (published under maiden name “Obando”)

• “Harvesting Dignity: Remembering the Lives of Farmworkers.” Institute for the Study of the Americas, UNC-CH (December 2012).
• “Latinos Reach New Highs in College Enrollment.” Institute for the Study of the Americas, UNC-CH (November 2012).

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Awards

• Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, Honorable Mention (April 2018)
• Diversity and Student Success Travel Award, The Graduate School, UNC-CH (April 2018)
• Performing Arts Special Activities Fund Grant, Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, UNC-CH (2017-2018)
• Chancellor’s Doctoral Candidacy Award, Initiative for Minority Excellence, UNC-CH (Fall 2017).
• Mellon Dissertation Grant, Institute for the Study of the Americas, UNC-CH (Summer 2017).
• Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar (Spring 2017).
• Future Faculty Fellowship Program, Center for Faculty Excellence, UNC-CH (Fall 2016).
• Florence Brann Eble Summer Research Fellowship, The Graduate School, UNC-CH (Summer 2016).
• Richard Bland Fellowship, The Graduate School, UNC-CH (Summer 2015).
• Travel Grant, English and Comparative Literature, UNC-CH (Spring 2017, 2015, 2013, 2012).
• Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program Fellowship (Summer 2008).

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