Research
My research focuses on the literary and historical ties between Spain and Africa and how those ties are narrated and politicized.
I approach literary production by Spanish and Hispano-African authors with a focus on questions of alterity, identity, and the conceptualization of space and nation. I frequently rely on theories from Said, Levinas, Tuan, Harvey, Lefebvre, and others. I have published articles that engage the issues of alterity and national identity in Spanish literature; these texts reflect my interest in a critical examination of culture and representation in the contemporary Spanish and Hispano-African novel.
My book, Africa in the Contemporary Spanish Novel, 1990-2010, is forthcoming from Lexington Books and should be published in summer 2021.
For AY2020-2021, I am the recipient of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award. Depending on the status of the global pandemic, I will travel to Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco for May to August 2021 and then to the Autonomous University of Madrid for August to December 2021 as a scholar-in-residence. During this time, I will be researching and writing a monograph that engages with an ecocritical analysis of Moroccan literature written in Spanish.
In addition to these projects, I have been developing a book-length work on Spanish colonialism in Africa during the 19th and 20th centuries. My initial research for this work was funded by a Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges Mednick Memorial Fellowship.
Publications:
Books
I approach literary production by Spanish and Hispano-African authors with a focus on questions of alterity, identity, and the conceptualization of space and nation. I frequently rely on theories from Said, Levinas, Tuan, Harvey, Lefebvre, and others. I have published articles that engage the issues of alterity and national identity in Spanish literature; these texts reflect my interest in a critical examination of culture and representation in the contemporary Spanish and Hispano-African novel.
My book, Africa in the Contemporary Spanish Novel, 1990-2010, is forthcoming from Lexington Books and should be published in summer 2021.
For AY2020-2021, I am the recipient of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award. Depending on the status of the global pandemic, I will travel to Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco for May to August 2021 and then to the Autonomous University of Madrid for August to December 2021 as a scholar-in-residence. During this time, I will be researching and writing a monograph that engages with an ecocritical analysis of Moroccan literature written in Spanish.
In addition to these projects, I have been developing a book-length work on Spanish colonialism in Africa during the 19th and 20th centuries. My initial research for this work was funded by a Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges Mednick Memorial Fellowship.
Publications:
Books
- Forthcoming: Africa in the Contemporary Spanish Novel: 1990-2010. Lexington Books, 2021.
- “Intrahistoria, alegoría e hibridez en Las tinieblas de tu memoria negra de Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo.” Espacios. Revista de la Asociación Marroquí de Estudios Ibéricos e Iberoamericanos, vol. 1-2, Winter 2018-2019, pp. 117-133.
- "'Esa araña invisible cuyas patas son sueños:' Granada as Space and Place in Ángel Ganivet's Poltical Thought." MIFLC Review, vol. 18, Fall 2016-2017, pp. 57-74. (Fall 2018).
- “‘La amada tiris, tierra de nuestros abuelos:’ The Sahara in Contemporary Sahrawi Literature.” CELAAN, Revue du Centre d’Etudes des Littératures et des Arts d’Afrique du Nord / Review of the Center for the Study of the Literatures and Arts of North Africa, vol. 15, no. 2-3, 2018, pp. 73-102.
- “Un reino tan lejano: Yudis, Shahrazad, and the Imaginary Space in the Contemporary Hispano-Moroccan Novel.” Research in African Literatures (Fall 2017)
- "España Transfetana: Writing the Protectorate and the Patria in La llamada del Almuédano and El tiempo entre costuras." Vanderbilt e-Journal of Luso-Hispanic Studies, Special Edition “Bodies and Boundaries: Representations of Contemporary Migration,” guest editor N. Michelle Shepherd (Fall 2012).
- "Easier Said Than Done: Masculinity on the Front Line in Rolando Hinojosa's The Useless Servants and Korean Love Songs." Confluencia, 28.1 (2012).
- "El último conquistador y el primer rey: África como heterotopía literaria en la ficción de Ángel Ganivet y Pío Baroja" in the volume Castilla bajo mirada extraña: Hacia un imaginario cultural, ed. Jorge González del Pozo. Valladolid, Spain: Editorial Páramo, 2016.
- "Oikos and the Other: Humanizing the Immigrant in Donato Ndongo’s El metro." In the volume African Immigrants in Contemporary Spanish Texts: Crossing the Straits, edited by Victoria Ketz and Debra Faszer-McMahon. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2015.
- Review of Trans-afrohispanismos: Puentes culturales críticos entre África, Latinoamérica y España edited by Dorothy Odartey-Wellington. The Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol. 96, no. 10, 2019, pp. 1560-1561.
- Review of Equatorial Guinean Literature in its National and Transnational Contexts by Marvin A. Lewis. TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, vol. 8, no. 1, 2018, pp. 172-174.
- Review of The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, eds. Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores. Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 17 (2013).
- “A dormir” a Spanish translation of “To Sleep” by Stan Galloway in What Lies Beyond the Frame. Unbound Content, 2018, p. 22.
- “The Slow Time.” Beechwood Review 3 (2017).
- “Like the Ocean,” “Upon Aging,” and “The Argument.” The This Magazine VIII (2017).
- “Daughters Grow So Quickly” and “A Quiet Line of Branches.” Dirty Chai Lit Mag 9 (2016): 45.
- "Two Poems by Mahan L. Ellison: 'Conversation becomes you' and 'The Sheathing of the Sun'." Black Heart Magazine (14 Jan 2015).