Bio

Grounded in a deep belief in the transformative power of art and the humanities to advance social justice and human rights, I am drawn to creative cultural production—literature, film, performance, and the visual arts—as sites of resistance, where dominant culture is questioned and alternative visions of individual subjectivity and collective life articulated. My research centers on race and ethnicity in Andean literature and culture, particularly the place of indigenous and indigenous-mestizo peoples and cultures in Peruvian national discourse and identity. My monograph, Creating the Hybrid Intellectual (Bucknell UP, 2007), is the first major English-language study of Peruvian indigenista writer, José María Arguedas. My co-edited volume, Unfolding the City (U of Minnesota, 2007), gathers scholarship, and explores Latin American women’s portraits of urban life. Andean Truths: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining Path Peru (Liverpool UP, 2015), winner of the MLA’s Katherine Singer Kovacs prize, studies how literature and the arts challenge the dominant narrative of national peace and reconciliation in Peru, after two decades of civil war, as constructed by Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Currently, I am completing a critical translation of human rights plays by Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, which aims to provide English-speaking audiences access to and nuanced understanding of this renowned Peruvian theater collective.

Department Member Since 2020