Comparative Literature Program

My interests in literatures of the Spanish-speaking world are broad and generally comparative in nature. Most of the courses that I teach revolve around 20th-century Latin American literature, but I like doing that by juxtaposing genres, voices and geographies that are not traditionally considered together.

In my research, I specialize in Asian and African literature written in Spanish. My initial work was on the early novels of Equatorial Guinea in west Africa. In the last three years, I have concentrated on Philippine literature in Spanish. Currently, I am finishing a book on these relatively unknown artistic traditions. I hope to show that the customary assumption that fiction and poetry in Spanish emerge only from Iberia and Latin America needs substantive revision in light of the rich complexities of Filipino and Equatoguinean literature.

My first book, Specters of Conquest: Indigenous Absence in Transatlantic Literatures, is forthcoming in 2010 from Fordham University Press. It includes chapters on Columbus's diary of his 1492-1493 voyage, the Popol Vuh (a Mayan narrative of the history of the world), Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Evita's Cuando los Combes luchaban (the first African novel in Spanish), Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, and Shelley's Frankenstein.

In addition, I work on U.S. folk music by such singer-songwriters as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler. My essay, "The Borderlands Poetics of Bruce Springsteen," recently appeared in the Journal of the Society for American Music.

This semester I am teaching a graduate course on indigenous and indigenist literature from Latin America and an undergraduate introduction to literary theory. Previously, I have taught courses focusing on literature in Spanish from modern Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Andes. I also have taught such courses as Afro-Hispanic literature, Literature and Human Rights, Asian and African literature in Spanish, and Ghosts in Modern Latin American literature.