Expertise

Modern Latin American Literature (19th, 20th, and 21st centuries), Latin American and Latinx Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Comparative Spanish American, Brazilian, and Inter-American Literature, Visual and Concrete Poetics, Avant-Gardes, Film Studies, Women’s Writing

Biography

A Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, my areas of specialization are 19th, 20th, and 21st century Latin American literature and poetics viewed within a comparative, inter-American and Latinx context. Bridging these historically divided fields, four problems guide my research: 1) the constructivist, radical reflexive turn in Latin American poetics and art during the 1950s and 60s; 2) the legacies of the historical Latin American avant-gardes; 3) the examination of literature in relationship to the other arts, media, and technology, and how literature relates to questions of affect, power, pop culture, and social justice; 4) the crisis of literary expression and nation-state discourses in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and, in consequence, the literary’s uneven relation with politics, critical theory, race, and gender in Latin American and Latinx Studies today. No doubt, my aim is to forge a new view of the problem nexus, and state of affairs in the field, that fruitfully underwrite the literature discussion and its crisis.           

My first book, Anti-Literature: The Politics and Limits of Representation in Modern Brazil and Argentina (University of Pittsburgh Press, Illuminations, 2017), articulates a rethinking of what is meant today by “literature.”  Examining key Latin American forms of experimental writing from the 1920s to the present, the book reveals literature’s power as a site for radical reflection and reaction to contemporary political and cultural conditions. My analysis engages the work of writers such as Clarice Lispector, Oswald de Andrade, the Brazilian concrete poets, Osman Lins, and David Viñas, to develop a theory of anti-literature that posits the feminine, multimedial, and subaltern as central to the undoing of what is meant by “literature.”

By placing Brazilian and Argentine anti-literature at the crux of a new way of thinking about the field, the book challenges prevailing discussions about the historical projection and critical force of Latin American literature. Examining a diverse array of texts and media that include the visual arts, concrete poetry, film scripts, pop culture, neo-baroque narrative, and others that defy genre, the book delineates the subversive potential of anti-literary modes of writing while also engaging current debates in Latin American studies on subalternity, feminine writing, posthegemony, concretism, affect, marranismo, and the politics of aesthetics.

The book is under contract and currently being translated into Portuguese by Editora Perspectiva and into Spanish by Santiago Arcos Editor with anticipated publication dates of 2023.

I am actively working on a second book that offers a new appraisal of the question of affect, politics, and vanguardism in Spanish American, Brazilian, Latinx, French Caribbean, and American experimental literature. The book centers its attention largely on the writings of Juan José Saer, Gloria Anzaldúa, Roberto Bolaño, Clarice Lispector, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin, and the Brazilian concrete poets. 

Selected Publications

Books:

• Anti-Literature: The Politics and Limits of Representation in Modern Brazil and Argentina. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Press, Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas, 2017. Website.
    - Reviewed in Transmodernity 8.1 (2018): 175-179, Transmodernity review
    - Chasqui 46.2 (November 2017): R38-40, Chasqui review
    - Luso-Brazilian Review 55.2 (2018): E19-E21, Luso-Brazilian review
    - Hispanic Review 86:4 (Autumn 2018): 520-523
• Antiliteratura: a política e os limites da representação no Brasil e na Argentina modernas. Trans. Maria Clara Cescato. São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, Estudos, Forthcoming.
• Antiliteratura: la política y los limites de la representación en Brasil y Argentina modernas. Trans. Gabriela García Cedro. Buenos Aires: Santiago Arcos Editor, Forthcoming.

Peer-Reviewed Articles:

• “The Specter of Sartre in Brazilian Concrete Poetry: Paideuma, Affect, Politics, and the Question of World Literature.” Revista Hispánica Moderna, Forthcoming, 35 pages.
• “Theses on Affect and Anti-Literature in Augusto de Campos: The Untimely Power of Brazilian Concretism.” Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies 8 (Fall 2021): 44-74. LINK 
• “Affect, Sensation, and Anti-Literature in Clarice Lispector.” Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities 28.2 (December 2022). Special volume, Philosophy with Clarice Lispector. Forthcoming, 30 pgs. (*Invited contribution, in preparation).
• “A Política do Barroco em Osman Lins: A Escritura da Violência e O Ornato.” Littera 12.23 (2021): 24-50. LINK 
• “A Antiliteratura de Augusto de Campos: Passagens entre Linguagens e Mídias.” Extra. Augusto de Campos: 90 anos. Special issue of Bunker: Revista de Literatura e Artes Visuais. 14 February 2021. 40-43.      
• “The Verbivocovisual Revolution: Anti-Literature, Affect, Politics, and World Literature in Augusto de Campos.”  CR: The New Centennial Review 20.1 (Spring 2020): 147-184. LINK. *Awarded Antonio Candido Prize 2021, for Best Article in the Humanities – Melhor Artigo em Ciências Humanas (LASA Brazil Section). 
• “Antinomias de la letra: El régimen de representación en la literatura latinoamericana.” Política Común: A Journal of Thought 12, Forthcoming, 30 pages. 
• “A Poetics of Resistance and Multiplicity: Valle-Inclán, Spanish Theater, and War in the Work of Dru Dougherty. Or Lessons of a Master.” Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea 42.4 (August 2017): 9-19. LINK
• “Subversions of the Sensible: The Poetics of Antropofagia in Brazilian Concrete Poetry.” Revista Hispánica Moderna 68.2 (December 2015): 165-90. LINK
• “Figurations of Immanence: Writing the Subaltern and the Feminine in Clarice Lispector.”  Política Común: A Journal of Thought 6 (Fall 2014): 33 pages.
• “Literature before Literature: Posthegemonic Mediation, the Body of Language and the Affect.” *Lead Article. Política Común: A Journal of Thought 6 (Fall 2014): 14 pages.
• “Formas de Fome: Anti-Literature and the Politics of Representation in Haroldo de Campos’s Galáxias.” CR: The New Centennial Review 14.3 (Winter 2014): 219-54.
• “The Explosion of the Letter: The Crisis of the Poetic and Representation in João Cabral de Melo Neto’s Morte e Vida Severina: auto de Natal pernambucano.” Luso-Brazilian Review 50.1 (2013): 201-28. LINK

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters:

• “Potência Intensiva: Multiarticulação, Afeto, Ideograma e Política em Haroldo de Campos.” Poesia-Crítica-Tradução: Haroldo de Campos e a Educação dos Sentidos. Ed. Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira and K. David Jackson. Trad. Gustavo Reis Louro. Berlin; New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, 2022. 137-154. LINK
• “The Avant-Garde: From Creacionismo to Ultraísmo, Brazilian Modernismo, Antropofagia, and Surrealism.” The Cambridge Companion to Latin American Poetry.  Ed. Stephen M. Hart.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 36-62. LINK 
• “Haroldo de Campos (1929-2003).” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jennifer Stock.Vol. 505. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2023. Introduction co-authored with Jelena O. Krstovic, pp. 1-6; introduction to texts single authored, pp. 6-7; p. 22; p. 32; p. 58; p. 64; p. 76; p. 84; pp. 112-114. LINK 
• “Augusto de Campos.”  Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twenty-First Century Brazilian Writers. Volume 384.  Eds. Monica Rector and Robert Anderson. Detroit: Gale, 2019. 69-80. 
• “Latin American Literary Representational Regime.” The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Eds. Sangeeta Ray, Henry Schwarz, José Luis Villacañas Berlanga, Alberto Moreiras and April Shemak. Vol. II.  Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. 923-32. LINK 

Scholarly Essays:

• “Viaje de luz, o sobre Demasiada luz para hacer poesía de Paula Cucurella.” Dossier especial, “Sobre Demasiada luz para hacer poesía de Paula Cucurella.” Ficción de la razón (Septiembre 2020): 25-28.
• “El sentido poético y el gesto neobarroco de Roger Santiváñez.” Góngora & Argot: Homenaje para Roger Santiváñez. Trans. Mario Pera and Adam Joseph Shellhorse.  Ed. Paúl. ​Guillen. Lima: Sol y Negro, 2015. 269-73.
• “El sentido poético y el gesto neobarroco de Roger Santiváñez.” Trans. Mario Pera.  Vallejo & Co. 4 pages, June 2014. LINK 

Translations:

• “Theory of the Non-Object.” By Ferreira Gullar. Art in Brazil: (1950 – Present). Brussels: Ludion, 2011. 59-61.
• “Neo-Concrete Manifesto.” By Ferreira Gullar.  Trans. Laura Pérez & Adam Joseph Shellhorse.  Art in Brazil: (1950 – Present). Brussels: Ludion, 2011. 55-57.

Interviews:

• "No hay literatura inocente’: An Interview with Argentine Intellectual and Novelist David Viñas.” Letras Hispanas 6.2 (Fall 2009): 127-37. LINK

Courses Taught

• Spanish 4133 - ‘This Sex Which is Not One’: Women’s Writing and Theory in Latin(x) America and Spain (Spring 2023) 

• Portuguese 3101 - Literature in the Age of Mass Media: Readings in Brazilian Literature from an Inter-American and Multimedial Context (Spring 2023) 

• SPAN 8140 - Affect’s Turn: Affect and Politics in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Latin American Literature (Fall 2022) 

• Spanish 3096 - Capstone Writing Course: Latin American Literature, Theory, and Composition (Fall 2022; Fall 2015)

• Spanish 5141 - Literatura y afecto en América Latina: Hispanóamerica y Brasil (Fall 2021)
• Portuguese 3101 - Literature and Revolution: Readings in Brazilian Literature and Culture from Machado de Assis to Brazilian Concrete Poetry (Spring 2021)
• Latin American Studies 4097 - Capstone Directed Study on Latin American Literature and Critical Theory (Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2018) 
• Spanish 8147 - La letra y sus márgenes: literatura hispanoamericana y brasileña (Spring 2020) 
• Spanish 4141/5142 - El concepto de ficción: Latin American Short Narratives, (Graduate Cross-Listed, Fall 2019; Fall 2020)
• Spanish 0968 - Honors World Society in Literature and Film: Experimental Latin American Film, Literature, and Art (Fall 2018, Fall 2019)
• Latin American Studies 1001 - Latin American Perspectives (Fall 2019)
• Spanish 3141 - Dialécticas de la letra: Introduction to Spanish American and Brazilian Literature (Spring 2019)
• Spanish 2002 - Hispanic Readings (Spring 2019; Spring 2020; Fall 2020)
• Spanish 4141/5146 - Literature and Revolution: Survey of Experimental Latin American Literature, Cinema, and Media, (Graduate Cross-Listed, Fall 2018)
• Portuguese 4000 - Literature and Revolution: Global Lusophone and Latin American Literature, 19th century-Present, (Spring 2018)
• Spanish 4161/5161, Global Latin American Literature through Art: Affect, Media, Theory, (Spring 2018)
• Spanish 8161 - Global Latin American Literature and Aesthetics in Theory (Fall 2017)
• Spanish 3142 - The Cultures of Latin America: Brazil and Spanish America (Fall 2017)
• Portuguese 4083 - Directed Reading, Brazilian Literature from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Fall 2022, Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Spring 2015)
• Spanish 4146/5146, Radical Reinventions of Language: The Problem of Experimentation in Spanish American and Brazilian Literature and Film (Graduate Cross-Listed, Spring 2017)
• Portuguese 4000 - Modern Brazilian Literature, Film and Culture (Spring 2017)
• Portuguese 3201 - Portuguese Speaking Cultures, (Fall 2015, 2016, and 2017)
• Portuguese 2001 - Portuguese Readings, Conversation, and Composition  (Fall 2016)
• Spanish 9083 - Directed Reading, A Transatlantic Endeavor: Modern Spanish American, Brazilian, and Portuguese Literature in Comparative Context (Fall 2016)
• Spanish 8147 - Global Forms: Affect and Multimedia in Latin American Literature (Spring 2016)
• Portuguese 2002 - Readings in Portuguese (Spring 2016)
• Spanish 2001 - Conversational Review (Fall 2016)
• Spanish 3002 - Hispanic Readings II (Spring 2015)
• Spanish 8147 - La letra y sus márgenes: literatura hispanoamericana y brasileña (Spring 2014)
• Spanish 0868 - Spanish America and Brazil in Literature and Film (Fall 2012, Spring 2014)
• Portuguese 4000/5000 - Modernity and the Margins of the Letter: Brazilian Literature from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Fall 2013)
• Portuguese 1021 - Portuguese for Spanish Speakers (Fall 2011, Fall 2013)
• Portuguese 3201 - Portuguese and Brazilian Culture and Civilization (Spring 2012)
• Spanish 3001 - Advanced Conversation and Composition in Spanish (Fall 2011)