Faculty

Profile

The main topic of my research has been Latin American literature.  In particular, I have written on the manner in which unified national identities have been imagined in literary texts out of Amerindian, African diasporic and Iberian elements; on how Latin American writers, artists, and intellectuals have negotiated their relationship with Western culture; on the work of the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Prize Winner; on the way revolution and revolutionary thinking is depicted in the fiction; and on the political and cultural activism of the Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui, during the 1920s.

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Degrees Held

PhD, Comparative Literature, University of Southern California; MA, Comparative Literature, University of Southern California; BA, English, California State University, Los Angeles

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Professional Affiliation

• Modern Language Association
• Latin American Studies Association

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Recent Publications

Books:

 

• Bread and Beauty: The Cultural Politics of José Carlos Mariátegui (Brill, 2020)
• Writing Revolution in Latin American: From Martí to García Márquez to Bolaño (Vanderbiilt UP, 2019) (Prose Award Winner in the Literature Category)
• Roberto Bolaño as World Literature, co-editor with Nicholas Birns (Bloomsbury, 2017)
• Critical Insights: Mario Vargas Llosa, editor (Salem Press, 2014)
• The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel: Bolaño and After, co-editor with Will H. Corral and Nicholas Birns  (Bloomsbury, 2013)
• Mario Vargas Llosa: Public Intellectual inNeoliberal Latin America (U of Arizona P, 2011)
• Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics , co-editor with Nicholas Birns (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) 
• The Spaces of Latin American Literature: Tradition, Globalization and Cultural Production  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) 
• Mestizo Nations: Culture, Race andConformity in Latin American Literature (U of Arizona P, 2002) 

 Selected Articles:

• "Boom Writers and Power."  Council of Hemispheric Affairs. September 15, 2014.
• "Vargas Llosa, el Nobel y la izquierda.Guaraguao" 16.40 (2012): 55-66.
• (co-written with Nicholas Birns) “The Historical Novel: The War of the End of the World.” The Cambridge Companion to Mario Vargas Llosa. Ed. Efraín Kristal. Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 2012. 62-73.  
• “‘¿En qué idioma escribe usted?’: Spanish, Tagalog, and Identity in José Rizal’s Noli me tangere.” MLN 126.2 (March 2011). 
• “Australia in Borges andBuarque.”  Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/NewZealand Literature 24.2 (December 2010): 157-63. 
• “Mr. Vargas Llosa Goes to Washington.” Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 21-28.
• “Mario Vargas Llosa versus Barbarism [PDF]” Latin American Research Review 45.2 (June, 2010). 5-26. 
• “¿Fue José CarlosMariátegui racista? [PDF]” A Contracorriente 7.2 (Winter 2010). 80-91.
• “DeEliot a Borges: Tradición y periferia [PDF]” Iberoamericana 7.26 (2007): 7-18.
• “RubénDarío Visits Ricardo Palma:Tradition, Cosmopolitanism, and the Development of an Independent LatinAmerican Literature.” Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana 36.1 (2007): 48-61. 
• “Christopher Isherwood Meets Jorge LuisBorges: On the Value of South American Cultures [PDF]” MLN 119 (2004): 329-43. 
• “Richard Rodriguez in ‘Borderland’:The Ambiguity of Hybridity [PDF]” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 26.1 (2001): 101-27.

Interviews: 

• "Bolaño and beyond: An Interview with Juan E. De Castro on Contemporary Spanish Language Literature."   Former People: Bangs, Whimpers, Art, Culture, and Commentary. September 30, 2013.

 

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Research Interests

Latin American literature; Latina and Latino literatures; Latin American popular cultures; constructions of nationality; Spanish literature.

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Awards And Honors

Prose Award in the Literature Category for Writing Revolution in Latin America.

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Current Courses

Admin Chair Assoc Chair (Spring 2020)

Ind Senior Project

Ind Senior Project (Spring 2020)

Independent Study

Independent Study (Spring 2020)

Latin American Women Writers

Latinx Literature and Identity

Lit & Rev in Lat Amer (Spring 2020)

Roberto Bolaño