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.

Degrees Held

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

Professional Affiliation

• Modern Language Association
• Latin American Studies Association

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.

Research Interests

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

Awards And Honors

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