active research projects
investigación en curso
Florecimiento Colectivo: Toward a Literary History of Indigenous Literatures in Abiayala
Florecimiento Colectivo offers a comparative literary history of three concurrent waves of 20th and 21st century Indigenous literary production as they give rise to the current “florecimiento” [flourishing or “boom”] in the lenguas originarias of Abiayala, or the hemispheric Americas. I focus on how, despite the particularities & irreducible differences of these native languages, works written by them and in diaspora tend to share a relational poetics that conceives of the earth as a living being and, therefore, part of the community. The book examines how, by thinking from their territories, the politico-literary works of Indigenous communities, and the communities themselves, construct and reproduce spaces that challenge the logic of the state and capitalism that has precipitated the current climate crisis.
Pluriversal Poetics: How Literatures in Indigenous Languages are Transforming World Literary Space
Authors who have achieved world literary status within a capitalist literary market dominated by English-language editorial networks have done so, as Pascale Casanova argues, by getting their texts to circulate within metropolitan centers. This book puts forth an alternate view of world literatures, one engendered by the efforts of authors writing in lenguas originarias who are relatively unconcerned with gaining access to the global market. Instead, they focus on the wider circulation of lenguas originarias within comunidades originarias and greater Abiayala. I argue that such linguistic activism offers us a model in which world literary status is determined not by the entrance into the market, but by the creation of new networks that allow for the increased engagement of local communities negotiating the constant encroachment of colonial languages. An emphasis on bilingualism and self-translation offers a plurilingual model of world literatures in which a single nation holds multiple worlds. Whether these worlds are brought into “world literary space” is immaterial, becoming instead the task of the translator.
From Tenochtitlán to "High Aztech": Nahuatl in Contemporary Latinx Literatures and Cultures
How are writers like Ernest Hogan, Sesshu Foster & Natalie Diaz engaging with Nahua cultures and languages? How have Nahuatl-influenced Latinx elders, such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Francisco Alarcón been re-read in light of contemporary critiques of Chicano nationalism? This monograph examines the literary & cultural histories of Nahuatl in the US, from Chicano Movement literatures to the YA fiction of David Bowles, tracing the circulation of Nahuatl in literary spaces, as well as in unlikely institutional contexts, such as prisons where forms of "High Aztec" serve as slang that evades guard surveillance.
lo peer-reviewed
investigación publicada
Periphērica: A Journal of Social, Cultural, and Literary History, vol. 3, no. 1, 2024, pp. 75-110. Co-authored with Paul Worley and Sarah E. Blanton.
Juan Felipe Herrera: Migrant, Activist, Poet Laureate, edited by Francisco A. Lomelí & Osiris Aníbal Gómez. University of Arizona Press, 2023.
ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, advanced publication, co-authored with Valeria Meiller
review of Teaching Modern Latin American Poetries
Chasqui: revista de literatura y cultura latinoamericana e indígena, vol. 49, no. 2.
review of Tlalkatsajtsilistle/Ritual de los olvidados
Calidoscopio verbal: lenguas y literaturas originarias, edited by Osiris Aníbal Gómez, Sara Poot Herrera, and Francisco A. Lomelí. Oro de la Noche, 2020.
traducciones dictaminadas
peer-reviewed Spanish-to-English translations
co-translated with Gabriela Ramirez Chavez, Am-Lit – American Literatures, vol. 5, no. 2, 2025, pp. 30-53.
co-translated with Gabriela Ramirez Chavez, Am-Lit – American Literatures, vol. 5, no. 2, 2025, pp. 25-29.
“Wifredo Lam and The Jungle: Return of the Prodigal Son to El Monte” by Suset Sánchez
El Monte’s New Itineraries: Narratives, Aesthetics, and Afrodiasporic Spirituality in the Contemporary Caribbean, edited by Alberto Sosa-Cabanas, Rutgers University Press, 2025 (forthcoming)
“El Monte in Images: Subjects, Spaces, Objects & Transcultural Interplay” by Lázara Menéndez
El Monte’s New Itineraries: Narratives, Aesthetics, and Afrodiasporic Spirituality in the Contemporary Caribbean, edited by Alberto Sosa-Cabanas, Rutgers University Press, 2025 (forthcoming)
“El Monte, There and Back Again” by Alberto Sosa-Cabanas
El Monte’s New Itineraries: Narratives, Aesthetics, and Afrodiasporic Spirituality in the Contemporary Caribbean, edited by Alberto Sosa-Cabanas, Rutgers University Press, 2025 (forthcoming)
SAPIENS Anthropology Magazine, “Indigenizing What It Means to be Human” special issue, curated by Margaret Noodin, Christine Weeber & Jason Vasser-Elong. 19 January 2023.
courses taught
un enfoque comparativo e interdisciplinario de los estudios literarios americanos
Comparative Borderlands Literatures of the Americas
Latin American & transnational Latinx Literatures
Students study 19th, 20th, and 21st century literary and visual representations of borderlands around the Americas, thinking comparatively about racialization, labor, indigeneity, gender, nationalism, militarization, diaspora, and colonialism. This course introduces students to key concepts in borderlands, transnational Latinx, and Latin American studies, encouraging students to develop the analytical tools for engaging border thinking in contexts around and beyond the globalized Americas. Possible units include the US-Mexico border, the "Northern Triangle" (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador), the Haitian-Dominican border, and the “Triple Frontier” (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay).
Translation in the 21st Century
Translation Studies & World Literature
By focusing on current debates and controversies surrounding the theory and practice of translation, this course introduces students to new and emergent literature in the fields of translation studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and world literature. Bridging literary works, critical theory, and forms of popular media, and providing an overview of historic inequities in the global literary marketplace, this course inquires critically into how women, queer, non-binary, neurodivergent, and BIPOC translators are problematizing an overwhelmingly white and U.S./Euro-centric industry and its institutions.
Contemporary Indigenous Poetry of North America
Indigenous Studies & Comparative Literature
This course is an introduction to contemporary poetry by First Nations, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous Latin American writers from across North America. “North America” here comprises three main areas: Canada and the United States and its unincorporated territories; Mexico and Central America; and the Caribbean. We discuss settler state models of reconciliation, as well as Indigenous resistance to liberal multiculturalism, inclusion, and redress. Ethics of sovereignty, autonomy, repatriation, and incommensurability are posed as alternatives.
Forms of the Struggle: U.S. Movement Literatures After 1929
Multiethnic U.S. Literatures
A movement literature, according to Juliana Spahr, is “a resistant literature with ties to political movements.” This introductory course surveys forms of cultural production associated with specific U.S. social justice movements, including novels, poems, theater, manifestos, speeches, and essays. What role has literature played in the critique of liberal democracy and in shaping the rhetoric of collective demands for equality, justice, and dignity? We’ll consider this question in light of several case studies, from the Popular Front to #Occupy.
Documentary, Investigative & Archival Poetics of the Americas
Latin American, transnational Latinx & Comparative Literature
How does poetry “intervene” in the writing of history, traditionally a narrative enterprise? This course traces modes of research-based poetry around the Americas, from the 1930s to present, examinging the diverse ways poetic form has been used to address, represent, and “un-tell” histories and historical events in North, Central, and South America. Situating each work within its particular historical and geographic context, we ask how different docu-poetic iterations theorize emerging and emergent conceptions of politics, collectivity, geo-political subjectivity, and national and global belonging.
The Modern Américan Short Story: a Comparative, Hemispheric Survey
Comparative Literature
This course will familiarize students with the nuances of close reading the short story as a literary form as well as probe and contaminate the boundaries of “American Literature.” Examining a variety of 20th century short story writers in the Americas, each week we read two authors whose work is paired to invite comparative analysis of stylistics, thematics, and politics. What constitutes American literature, and how does it seek to represent the region’s past and hail its future? How do writers transnationalize the act of writing and the writing subject?