Assistant Professor of Latinx Literature
English
Latino & Puerto Rican Studies Minor
Assistant Professor
English, MA
Contact
Office
Willard-DiLoreto Hall
401-17
Education
Areas of Expertise
Latinx Literature
Caribbean Literature & Visual Culture
Literary Theory
Memory Studies
Publications, Research & Presentations
“Cutting Cane: A Cultural Studies-Informed Approach to Trauma and Cultural Competence.” (Co-authored with Carlos A. Larrauri). HPHR Journal (formerly the Harvard Public Health Review), PRISM: Mental Health Through the Lens of Difference, September 2023.
“Mimicking Seas and Malefic Mirrors in Suzanne Césaire: An Ecopoetic Theory of Caribbean Subjectivity,” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, issue 69, November 2022.
“Echoes off the Straits of Florida: The Rafts of the Cuban Balseros.” Featured in the Smithsonian Learning Lab’s Cuban Balseros: Using Art and Artifact to Explore an American Immigration Story, Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access, April 6, 2020.
Courses Taught
ENG 219 / LTN 219 Introduction to Latinx Literature
ENG 388 Topics in World Literature: Contemporary Caribbean Literature
ENG 388 Topics in World Literature: Gender & Sexuality in Caribbean & Latinx Literature
Honors Writing & Research I
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~~~NEW SPRING 2025 COURSE~~~
ENG 488 Advanced Studies in World Literature: Cuban & Haitian Sea Migration Literature
MW 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
Description | From the mid-twentieth century to today, people from the island countries of Cuba and Haiti have taken to the sea on small, sometimes handmade boats and rafts in hopes of escaping turbulent political and economic conditions at home. Their stories have been told in many forms of media ranging from photography and journalism to literature and the visual and performing arts. However, despite similarities across their journeys and conditions at home—and despite the fact that members of both groups have historically been held alongside one another in U.S. immigration detention centers—Cuban and Haitian migration have often been treated as discrete phenomena. This separation results partly from the legacy of colonization that has balkanized the region.
In this course, we will use a comparative, digital humanities-based approach to examine how Cuban and Haitian sea migrations have been imagined in literature and popular media. Just like in other English courses you may have taken, we will investigate how literature and visual media represent the human condition. We will do this through careful textual analysis of fictional, nonfictional, and poetic works by writers of Cuban and Haitian descent. At the same time, digital tools such as mapping and data visualization will help us consider humanistic questions from new angles as we turn to digital archives and consider how these migrations have been curated for public memory. Throughout the semester, we will experiment with digital humanities tools (no prior experience necessary), and we will explore the following questions: How have these migrations been imagined across different forms of media? How does putting literary and digital (or digitized) materials in conversation with one another affect how we interpret the events they aim to represent?
Learning Outcomes | By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:
- Articulate key concepts and debates regarding the representation of migrants generally, and Cuban and Haitian migrants in particular
- Apply critical methodologies (e.g. close reading, visual analysis, etc.) to works of various media and genres
- Utilize digital methodologies to enhance your digital literacy* and humanities research skills
- Synthesize, analyze, and evaluate the ideas of others to build your own research
- Conduct research independently and collaboratively
- *The American Library Association (ALA) defines digital literacy as "the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills”