Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Director, Literature Program
I am a scholar of colonialism in Latin America. I specialize in literary and cultural production that reflects material practices of domination, the long-term effects of colonization, and the ways in which imperial power has been challenged. My research focuses primarily on the early colonial period but also highlights the ongoing effects of this foundational period and considers how it is remembered and reimagined in postcolonial narratives, cultural production, and contemporary scholarship. My methodology is comparative and interdisciplinary. My published work considers textual, visual, and archival sources from Spanish and Portuguese America, focusing on case studies from Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. In my monograph, Race, Sex, and Segregation in Colonial Latin America (Routledge, 2022), I trace the emergence and early development of indigenous segregationist policies in the second half of the 16th and early 17th centuries. I show that segregationist measures influenced the material reorganization of colonial space, decisively shaped processes of racialization across Latin America, and contributed to the politicization of reproduction. My current research focuses on narratives about the latex-bearing tree Hevea brasiliensis. The project traces how rubber-producing plants became a global commodity—emphasizing the disastrous environmental impact and brutal labor exploitation that ensued as a result—and foregrounds the links between botany, plant commodification, and imperialism.
I have also organized conferences, workshops, and symposia working with colleagues from different disciplines around the world and have curated public-facing exhibitions. In 2023-2024, I co-led the Sawyer Seminar Global Slaveries, Fugitivity and the Artiles of Unfreedom. As part of the Sawyer Seminar, I also co-curated two exhibitions: 1) at Process Gallery in 2024 that featured the work of artists from South Africa and Brazil and was titled Refusal: An Exhibition on Fugitivity from Enslavement, 2) at the Lilly Library in 2023 featuring primary sources designed to inform the public about histories of slavery and fugitivity around the world. In 2015, I also co-organized a comparative workshop on Subaltern Studies held at Indiana University’s Gateway Center in India.
The College of Arts