Department of Spanish and Portuguese

I am a scholar of modern Latin American and Caribbean literature and culture. My first and formative area of interest was one of Cuba’s most canonical writers, Alejo Carpentier. I studied his early music collaborations and experience with French Surrealism and radio broadcasting in relation to the modernist novels that would make him famous. This resulted in my book on Alejo Carpentier y la cultura del surrealismo en América Latina (2006, LASA Premio Iberoamericano). I have recently returned to studying Carpentier and am currently editing a volume on “Carpentier in Context” for Cambridge University Press.

More broadly, my interests have come to include cultural history and theory, Cuban Studies, and sound studies. My fascination with the idea of Latin America as a historical construct led to my second monograph, The Specter of Races. Latin American Anthropology and Literature between the Wars (2016), which reconstructs the scientific and literary collaborations leading towards the rise of a culture paradigm over biological notions of race and mestizaje, with focus on four key figures (Fernando Ortiz, Jacques Roumain, Paul Rivet, Gilberto Freyre). This interest in cultural theories about Latin America also led me to the influential German philosopher Oswald Spengler’s posthumous drama Montezuma which I published in German (2011) and in Spanish translation (2020). It is notable for revealing the imprint of Spengler’s early fascination with early Mexico on his bestselling Decline of the West. 

I continue to visit and study contemporary Cuba, and my co-edited book Havana Beyond the Ruins. Cultural Mappings after 1989 (2011) explores changing representations of postrevolutionary Havana in literature, film, philosophy, and architecture. More recently, I have co-directed a study-abroad trip to Cuba and am a leader of the Cuba Initiative. As the Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (2015-19), I also co-organized an international Caribbean Studies conference taking place in the wake of Hurricane Maria and leading to the edited volume Caribbean Migrations. The Legacies of Colonialism (2020, Choice Magazine outstanding title). Together with Oana Panaïté, I led a reading group on Martinican intellectual Edouard Glissant, culminating in a symposium and forthcoming special issue (Journal of Francophone Philosophy).

My current interest is in the intersections between literature and sound studies, which are the focus of several essays and a manuscript in progress on “The Latin/o American Novel in the Digital Age.”

I have received fellowships from the Whiting and the Humboldt Foundations. At Indiana University, I am the recipient of an Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award and a Latino Faculty and Staff Council Award. I have served as an MLA assembly delegate, a member of the PMLA Advisory Committee, and on the MLA’s executive committee on Literature and Anthropology. I am also a board member of Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures and of the Iberoamericana Vervuert book series “Estudios Latinoamericanos de Erlangen” and “Nuevos Hispanismos.”

Books

• Alejo Carpentier y la cultura del surrealismo en América Latina. Madrid: Vervuert-Iberoamericana, 2006.
• The Specter of Races. Latin American Anthropology and Literature between the Wars. New World Studies. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016.

Edited Books

• Cuba: un siglo de literatura (1902-2002). Co-edited with Roberto González Echevarría. Madrid: Colibrí, 2004. 
• Havana Beyond the Ruins. Cultural Mappings after 1989. Co-edited with Esther Whitfield. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.
• Caribbean Migrations. The Legacies of Colonialism. Editor. Critical Caribbean Studies. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020.

Editions

• Versionen Montezumas. Lateinamerika in der historischen Imagination des 19. Jahrhunderts. Mit dem vollständigen Manuskript von Oswald Spenglers Montezuma. Ein Trauerspiel (1897). Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2011.
• Oswald Spengler, Moctezuma. Un drama (1897). Edición y estudio introductorio de Anke Birkenmaier. Traducción de Jorge Cuesta. Madrid: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2020.

Selected essays

• “Alejo Carpentier’s and Cuba’s Literary Twentieth Century” The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature. Eds. Vicky Unruh, Jacqueline Loss (forthcoming).
• “Valeria Luiselli’s Desierto sonoro and the Sonic Registers of the Novel.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos,3. (October 2023): 519-38.
• * “Sound Studies and Latin American Literature.” Mariano Siskind, Guillermina De Ferrari, eds. The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Latin American Literary and Cultural Forms. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022. 347-355.
• “El Moctezuma de Spengler.” Letras Libres (México) 266 (February, 2021). https://www.letraslibres.com/mexico/revista/el-moctezuma-oswald-spengler.
• *”Severo Sarduy y la radio.” Cámara de eco. Homenaje a Severo Sarduy. Gustavo Guerrero, Catalina Quesada, eds. México: Fondo de cultura económica, 2018.
• “’Soy una Juana de Arco electrónica’: Severo Sarduy’s radio play ‘Dolores Rondón’. La Habana Elegante. Segunda época. 57 (November 2015). http://www.habanaelegante.com/November_2015/Invitation_Birkenmaier.html
• ”Leonardo Padura and the New Historical Novel” A contracorriente 13.1 (Fall 2015): 13-25. Special issue: “Post-Detection Padura”. Eds. Guillermina de Ferrari, Vicky Unruh. http://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/1417
• “El linchamiento, el teléfono móvil y la gran ciudad: dos ficciones negras de Ena Lucía Portela.” Mitologías hoy. Revista de pensamiento, crítica y estudios literarios latinoamericanos (Barcelona) 10 (2014): 63-71. Special issue: “Una ventana a la obra de Ena Lucía Portela y a la narrativa cubana del siglo XXI.” http://revistes.uab.cat/mitologias/issue/view/19.
• “Scenarios of Colonialism and Culture. Oswald Spengler’s Latin America.” MLN Hispanic Issue 28.2 (March, 2013): 256-276.
• “Entre filología y antropología: Fernando Ortiz y el Día de la Raza.” Antípoda. Revista de antropología y arqueología 15 (Colombia) (July-Dec 2012). Special issue: “Antropología y literatura.” 193-221.
• “Introduction: Is there a Post-Cuban Literature?” Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 82. 44.1. Special issue: “Cuba inside and out” (May 2011). 6-12.
• "El hispanismo en América. Literatura, estudios culturales y lingüística en el panorama actual." Nuevos hispanismos interdisciplinarios y trasatlánticos. Ed. Julio Ortega. Madrid: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2010. 199-213.
• "Art of the Pastiche: José Manuel Prieto's Rex and Cuban Literature of the 1990s." Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 43. Special Issue: "Cuban Literature of the 1990s" (2009): 123-147.
• "From Surrealism to Popular Art: Paul Deharme's Radio Theory." Modernism/Modernity 16.2 (2009): 357-374.
• Dirty Realism at the End of the Century: Latin American Apocalyptic fictions."Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 40 (fall 2006): 489-512.
• "Más allá del realismo sucio: El rey de La Habana de Pedro Juan Gutiérrez." Cuban Studies 32 (2001): 37-55.

• Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.
• Premio Iberoamericano 2007 of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) for Alejo Carpentier y la cultura del surrealismo en América Latina.
• Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities.