Education
University of California, Irvine Ph.D. in English June 1995
University of California, Irvine M.A. in English March 1991
Yale University B.A. with honors in English June 1988
Fields of Specialization
U.S. Latino/a fiction, 20th-century American women's literature, feminist
criticism, African-American fiction, 20th-century American literature
Publications
Books
On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity. Gainesville, FL: University
Press of Florida, 2007. Paperback edition 2009. (Authors covered include Ana Castillo, Rudolfo Anaya, Cristina
García, Julia Alvarez, Achy Obejas, Piri Thomas, Demetria Martínez, Ana Menéndez, and others.) Reviewed in Latino Studies, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature,
The Year’s Work in English Studies, American Literature.
The Madwoman Can't Speak: Or Why Insanity Is Not Subversive. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, Fall 1998. (Authors covered include Toni Morrison, Helena María Viramontes, Cristina Garcia,
Sylvia Plath, Kate Millett, Eudora Welty, Shirley Jackson.) Named "Outstanding Academic Title" for 1999 by Choice;
designated "Nota Bene" by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Also reviewed in Times Literary Supplement
(London), Modern Fiction Studies, Studies in the Novel, and Feminist Bookstore News, among others. 195 pp.
Scholarly articles
"Documenting the Undocumented: Life Narratives of ‘Illegal’ Immigrants."
Forthcoming in Biography.
"The Voice of the Voiceless: Religious Rhetoric, Undocumented
Immigrants, and the New Sanctuary Movement in the United States." Forthcoming in Sanctuary Practices in International Perspective.
Edited by Randy Lippert and Sean Rehaag. Routledge.
"Narrating the Non-Nation: Literary Journalism
and ‘Illegal’ Border Crossings." Arizona Quarterly 68.3 (Autumn
2012): 157-176.
"Latinidad." The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Literature. Edited
by Frances Aparicio and Suzanne Bost. New York: Routledge, 2013. 13-24.
"The
Lost Ones: Post Gatekeeper Border Fictions and the Construction of Cultural Trauma."
Latino Studies 8:
304-27.
"At the Intersection of Trauma and Testimonio: Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones." Ant
ípodas: Journal of Hispanic and Galician Studies 20 (October 2009): 5-26.
"Central Americans in the City: Goldman, Tobar, and the Question of Panethnicity." LIT: Literature, Interpretation,
Theory 20.3 (July 2009): 173-95.
"
'The Pleas of the Desperate': Collective Agency versus Magical Realism in Ana Castillo’s
So Far From God."
Tulsa
Studies in Women’s Literature.
24.1 (Spring 2005). 81-103.
"‘Puerto Rican Negro’: Defining Race in Piri Thomas's Down These
Mean Streets." MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.): 29.2 (Summer 2004): 205-26.
" 'Jasón's Indian': Mexican Americans and the Denial of Indigenous Ethnicity in
Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima." Critique 45.2 (Winter 2004): 115-28.
"Margarita Engle, Cuban American Conservatism, and the Construction of (Left)
U.S. Latino/a Ethnicity." Lit: Literature / Interpretation / Theory 13.4 (October-December 2002): 249-67.
"Contesting the Boundaries of ‘Exile’ Latino/a Literature." World
Literature Today 74.3 (Summer 2000): 507-17.
"Speaking for Others: Problems of Representation in the Novels of Julia Alvarez."
Antípodas: Journal of Hispanic and Galician Studies 10 (1998): 53-66.
"Beyond Otherness: Negotiated Identities and Viramontes’s ‘The Cariboo
Cafe.’ " Journal of the Short Story in English (Fall 1996): 29-42. Reprinted in Women on the Edge: Ethnicity
and Gender in Short Stories by American Women. Corinne Dale and J.H.E. Paine, eds. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
19-33.
"The Madwoman Can't Speak: Post-War Culture, Feminist Criticism, and Welty's 'June
Recital.' " Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 15.1 (Spring 1996): 123-146.
"Multiple Personality and the Postmodern Subject: Theorizing Agency." Lit:
Literature / Interpretation / Theory 7 (April 1996): 63-86.
"Moving Beyond 'The Blank White Spaces': Atwood, Postmodernism, and Strategic
Resistance." Studies in Canadian Literature 19.1 (1994): 20-42.
Edited collections
Trujillo, Trauma, Testimony: Mario Vargas Llosa,
Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz and Other Writers on Hispaniola
(special issue, co-edited with Roy Boland). Antípodas: Journal of Hispanic
and Galician Studies 20 (October 2009).
Cultural Collisions and Cultural Crossings: Psychic Borderlands in the Works
of Julia Alvarez, Manlio Argueta, and Alfredo Conde (special issue, co-edited
with Roy Boland). Antípodas: Journal of Hispanic and Galician Studies 10 (1998).
Interviews
" 'The Territory of the Storyteller': An Interview with Julia Alvarez." Antípodas:
Journal of Hispanic Studies of Australia and New Zealand 10 (1998).
Short essays / entries / book reviews
"Responding to the Human Costs of US Immigration Policy: No More Deaths and the New Sanctuary
Movement." Latino Studies 7.1 (Spring 2009): 112-22.
Rev. of The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature, by Raphael Dalleo and Elena
Machado Sáez. MELUS 33.1 (Spring
2008): 174-76.
"Julia Alvarez." The Literary Encyclopedia (online). 15 Jan,
2007. <http://www.litencyc.com/>. 3244 words.
"Achy Obejas." The Literary Encyclopedia (online). 14 Nov, 2005 <http://www.litencyc.com/>. 1170 words.
"Cristina García."
The Literary Encyclopedia (online). 17 May, 2005 <http://www.litencyc.com/>. 2640 words.
Rev. of
Questions of Power: The Politics of Women’s Madness Narratives, by Susan J. Hubert.
Biography
26.4 (2003): 727-31.
Rev. of On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture, by Louis
A. Pérez, Jr. American Studies 42.1 (Spring 2001): 180-81.
"Cultural Collisions and Cultural Crossings: Psychic Borderlands in the Works
of Julia Alvarez, Manlio Argueta and Alfredo Conde" (Introduction). With Roy Boland. Antípodas: Journal of Hispanic Studies
of Australia and New Zealand 10 (1998).
"Latino/a Literature of the Sea." Encyclopedia of American Literature of the
Sea and Great Lakes. Jill B. Gidmark, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. 237-240.
"Farewell to the Sea by Reinaldo Arenas." Encyclopedia of American
Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes. Jill B. Gidmark, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. 137-38.
"The Ethics of Hiring." MLA Profession 94 (1994): 62-63.
