Candidates for the Election of the Advisory Board―Academic Profile

Isabel Caldeira  is Associate professor of English and American Studies at the Faculty of Letters and Senior Research Fellow of the Center for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra, Portugal. Her teaching focuses on American literature and culture (with a special emphasis on literature of the African diaspora) and Feminist studies. She participated in the creation of the Program in American Studies (Master’s and PhD) in 2008, which she has directed since 2012. The PhD program was associated to CES in 2011, having been redesigned as an Inter-American studies program. Her research fields are American and African American Literature and Culture, Comparative studies and studies of the African Diaspora – Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian, Cape Verdean, Angolan, and Mozambiquean. She has published on African American and Caribbean literature, racism, and feminist issues. She contributed to Translocal Modernisms: International Perspectives (Peter Lang, 2008), Trans/Oceanic, Trans/American, Trans/lation: Issues in International American Studies (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), nd America Where? 20th-Century Transatlantic Perspectives (Peter Lang, 2012), which she co-edited. She is also the editor of Novas Histórias Literárias/New Literary Histories (Coimbra: MinervaCoimbra, 2004). She is a former President of APEAA and a former member of the Board of EAAS. She is currently editor-in-chief of Op.Cit.: Journal of Anglo-American Studies.

Sarah Corona Berkin realizó sus estudios de Doctorado en Comunicación en la Uni­ver­sidad Católica de Lovaina, Bélgica. Realiza investigación en comunicación inter­cul­tural y cultura de la imagen en distintos grupos sociales. Recibió el “Premio a la Vincu­la­ción Universidad-Sociedad”(2002) que otorga la Universidad de Guadalajara. Es Asesora pedagógica responsable del proyecto Secundaria intercultural Tatuutsi Ma­­xak­waxi, Sierra Huichola; proyecto ganador de “Experiencias innovadoras de escuelas secundarias”2004, de la Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación y la Cultura (OEI)”. Obtuvo el “Gold Addy Award” (2006) de la American Advertising Fed­­­­­eration por el Calendario Intercultural Wixárika y Mención Honorífica del Premio al Mejor Libro de Antropología e Historia 2007 (CONACULTA/INAH) por Entre voces…Fragmentos de educación ‘entre-cultural’. Actualmente es profesora de la Uni­­versidad de Guadalajara y Miembro del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores Nivel III.

Emron Esplin studied inter-American literary studies/the literatures of the Americas at Michigan State University, where he graduated with a Ph.D. in English and a graduate minor in Latin American and Caribbean Studies in 2008. From 2008-2013, he taught as an assistant professor of English and American Studies at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, and he also served on the academic board and the teaching staff of the International Summer School on the Americas, sponsored by the Center for Inter-American Studies at the University of Graz, Austria from 2008-2012. In summer 2013, Emron moved with his family to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah where his wife, Marlene, began a position as an assistant professor of humanities and he accepted a position as an assistant professor of English. In both his teaching and in his writing, Emron is heavily invested in understanding America in a hemispheric rather than a national context. He perennially teaches courses on “Greater Mexico” and on Edgar Allan Poe’s literary relationship with the Río de la Plata region of South America. His publications include comparative articles on Nellie Campobello and Katherine Anne Porter; Porter’s time in Mexico; fictional, nonfictional, and cinematic portrayals of Pancho Villa; and the reciprocal influence between Poe and Jorge Luis Borges. His monograph, Borges’ Poe, analyzes Borges’ literary criticism on Poe, his Poe translations, and the hidden and overt connections between Borges’ and Poe’s non-detective fiction, and it is currently under review with a university press. Emron has also co-edited, with Portuguese translator and Translation Studies scholar Margarida Vale de Gato, an extensive volume on the translations of Poe’s works in 19 different national/literary traditions from Europe, Asia, northern Africa, and the Americas. This collection, entitled Translated Poe, is forthcoming with Lehigh University Press in their Perspectives on Edgar Allan Poe series. Emron has been involved with IAS since 2010, presenting at the organization’s conferences in Essen and Guadalajara and promoting the organization among students and colleagues at his universities and at several other schools. He is excited about the possibility of serving IAS more directly as a member of the Advisory Board.

Jonathan Hart, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at University of Alberta, has served the IAS from its beginning. A poet, critic and historian, he is editor of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature and the author of twenty or more books and many articles. His interest is in comparing literatures, histories and cultures of the Americas and has been doing inter-American work for decades. Some of his book that illustrate that focus are Representing the New World: The English and French Uses of the Example of Spain; Comparing Empires European Colonialism from Portuguese Expansion; Empires and Colonies, and From Shakespeare to Obama: A Study in Lan­guage, Slavery and Place. He has served on key committees or executive com­mit­tees for Fulbright, the Royal Society of Canada and the International Comparative Literature Association. He has assessed manuscripts for the Modern Language Association of America, Oxford University Press, and other leading journals, associations and presses. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Cambridge, Princeton, Toronto, the Sor­bonne Nouvelle (Paris III) and other universities and has given talks, lectures and seminars in China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Australia as well as in countries in the Americas and Europe. He would be delighted to serve another term if honored with election.

Olaf Kaltmeier is Junior Professor of Transnational History of the Americas and Ex­ecutive Director of the Center for InterAmerican Studies at Bielefeld University. Olaf Kaltmeier is member of the advisory board of the IAS. He has organized the founding conference of the IAS at the ZIF in Bielefeld, and he was engaged in the organization of the IAS biannual conferences in Guadalajara (2012) and Lima (2014). At the CIAS he is conducting the BMBF-research project “The Americas as Space of Entanglement” (with W.Raussert and A.Epple) as well as the Bielefeld-section of the BMBF-research network on “Latinamerica: Citizenship, Ethnicity and Belonging”. Among his research areas are Inter-American Area Studies, indigeneity and indigenous social movements, postcolonial history and coloniality, urban studies and heritage politics. He has recently published Politische Räume jenseits von Staat und Nation (2012), Selling EthniCity: Urban Cultural Politics in the Americas(2011) and En diálogo: Metodologías horizontales en ciencias sociales y culturales (with Sarah Corona Berkin, 2012). Together with J.Raab and S. Thies he is editor of the “Inter-American Studies |Estudios Interamericanos” where he recentliy edited Transnational Americas: Envisioning Inter-American Area Studies in Globalization Processes  (2013).

Luz Angélica Kirschner is a permanent Full-Time Lecturer currently teaching at Bielefeld University in Germany. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Criticism, and Aesthetics at Penn State in 2008. She has taught at Wisconsin-Madison, Penn State, Bielefeld, and Guadalajara Universities. At Bielefeld Kirschner has offered courses on U.S. ethnic literatures, Latin@ and Latin American literatures and cultures, literary theory, cultural studies, globalization, human rights, and race from Inter-American and Transatlantic perspectives in the Departments of American Studies and the program Inter-American Studies of her current institution. Her research focuses on comparative literary studies of ethnicity, race, gender, and migration exploring particularly how identity formation and difference are mediated through literature and aesthetics as well as impacted by contemporary socio-economic manifestations such as neoliberalism and globalization. Her edited volume Expanding Latinidad: An Inter-American Perspective (2012) was published in Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe (Arizona State University). Her current research projects include her book manuscript with the working title Presumed Provincialism: Ethnic Women Writers on Three Continents, 1995-2013 and articles for the Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights and the volume Beyond Borders: Fine Lines, Fences, and Frontiers in the Americas.

Roberta Maierhofer is professor of American Studies at the University of Graz, Austria, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the State University of New York, Binghamton, USA (since 1996) From 1999 to 2011, she held a series of Vice-Rector positions for International Relations (1999-2003), International Relations and Affirmative Action for Women (2003-2007), and International Relations and Interdisciplinary Cooperation (2007-2011). In 2000, she initiated and established the focus area South-Eastern Europe for the University of Graz, as one of the first European universities, and was instrumental in establishing structures, programs and funding opportunities in order to establish an emphasis region in research, teaching and cooperation. This know-how of regional and inter-regional collaboration was fundamental for her leadership role at the Center for Inter-American Studies, which she has been directing since February 2007, and also determined how the University of Graz established a second regional focus area in terms of North-, Central- and South America in 2012 (“Strategie 2020”). Her research focuses on American Literature and Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Transatlantic Cooperation in Education and Age/Aging Studies. Since 2011, she has been representing Austrian universities as a member of the Board of the Austrian Fulbright Commission, and is a member of the University Council of the University of Bamberg, Germany. Since 2004, she has been directing various summer schools of the University of Graz, which she established in the fields of European and Inter-American Studies.

Carmen Martínez Novo is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies Program at the University of Kentucky. She is author of Who Defines Indigenous? (Rutgers University Press, 2006) and editor of Repensando los movimientos indígenas (FLACSO, Ecuador, 2009). She has written numerous peer reviewed articles and book chapters on indigenous identities and indigenismo in Mexico and Ecuador. She is recipient of a Post-Ph.D. scholarship from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research among other grants, and has been visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Grinnell College, Universidad Central, Colombia, Universidad Iberoamericana, México D.F., and University of Lleida in Spain.

Graciela Martínez-Zalce: PhD in Modern Literature. Researcher and Coordinator of the Globalization Studies Area at the Centre for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico. Member of te National Resesrchers System and of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. Her most recent publications are: Cine y Frontera. Territorios ilimitados de la mirada (2014, with Juan Carlos Vargas, eds.) and (Re)discovering America. Road movies and other travel narratives (2012 with Wilfried Raussert, eds.)

Sophia A. McClennen is Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, where she directs the Center for Global Studies. Her books are The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language, and Space in Hispanic Literature (Purdue 2004), Ariel Dorfman: An Aesthetics of Hope (Duke UP 2010), Comparative Cultural Studies and Latin America (co-edited with Earl Fitz, Purdue 2004), Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror (co-edited with Henry James Morello, Purdue 2010), and Colbert’s America: Satire and Democracy (Palgrave 2011), a co-written book, Neoliberalism, Terrorism, Education (Paradigm 2013), which she wrote with Jeffrey Di Leo, Henry Giroux, and Kenneth Saltman. Forthcoming are two books Is Satire Saving Our Nation? Co-written with Remy Maisel (Palgrave 2014) and The Routledge Companion to Human Rights and Literature, co-edited with Alexandra Schultheis-Moore (Routledge 2015). In addition she has published over 60 essays and edited six special journal issues.  She serves on ten editorial boards and has been elected to executive committees of MLA, ACLA, and IASA. In her current work on Latin American cinema and globalization she is studying the intersections between cultural forms, global change, and ideas of identity.

Gonzalo Portocarrero is professor at the Social Sciences Department in the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Essex in United Kingdom. His areas of teaching and research include culture, violence, ethnicity, racism, gender, and literature. He co-coordinates the M.A. program in cultural studies. He has published 12 books and a great number of articles in academic journals. He has been president of the national commission for the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Jose Maria Arguedas birth. His more recent books are La urgencia por decir nosotros: los intelectuales y la idea nacional en el Peru republicano (forthcoming), Profetas del odio: raíces culturales y liderazgo en Sendero Luminoso (Fondo Editorial de la PUCP, 2012), Oído en el silencio: ensayos de crítica cultural (Fondo Editorial de la Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales, 2010). He writes a column, every fortnight, in El Comercio, one of the most important peruvian newspapers.

Stefan Rinke is Professor of Latin American History at the Institute of Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. He is speaker of the German-Mexican Graduate School “Between Spaces” – a cooperative doctoral program with El Colegio de México, UNAM and CIESAS and co-speaker of the Collaborative Research Area “Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood”. Recently he has been granted an Einstein Research Fellowship for his project on Latin America and the First World War. Amongst his most recent publications count Kolumbus und der Tag von Guanahani 1492: Ein Wendepunkt der Geschichte [Columbus and the Day of Guanahani 1492: A Turning Point in History] (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2013), Lateinamerika und die USA: Eine Geschichte zwischen Räumen [Latin America and the United States: A History Between Spaces] (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2012), Las revoluciones en América Latina: Las vías a la independencia, 1760-1830 (México: El Colegio de México, 2011) and co-edited together with Hans-Martin Hinz and Frederik Schulze Bicentenario – 200 años de independencia en América Latina: la historia entre memoria y futuro (Stuttgart: Heinz 2011). Rinke is member of the board of the journals Geschichte und Gesellschaft and Iberoamericana, and co-editor of the Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit. His research interests include Latin American history from the 16th to the 21st centuries, Latin America in a global context and the comparative history of the Americas. He has been a founding member of the Board of IAS.

Sebastian Thies is full professor for Hispanoamerican Philology and Cultural Studies at the University of Tübingen. He was Professor for InterAmerican Studies at Bielefeld University from 2011 until 2012. From 2002 until 2009 he was Juniorprofessor for Inter­american Studies at Bielefeld University. As Chair he managed the Zif research group “E Pluribus Unum. Ethnic Identities in Processes of Transnationalization in the Americas” from  2008-2012. Among his research interests are: Literature and Culture of the Latin American Diaspora, Identity Politics in the Americas, Gender construction in Latin American Literature, Historical Novel, Documentary Film and its Theory. He has been member of the Advisory Board since 2009.

The Journal fiar (forum inter-american research) selects as ex officio member for the Advisory Board: Yolanda Minerva Campos García:

Yolanda Minerva Campos García es egresada de la licenciatura en Ciencias de la Comunicación de Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de la UNAM; estudió la Maestría en Historia de México de la Universidad de Guadalajara y el Doctorado en Historia del Cine en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Trabaja como profesora de tiempo completo en la Universidad de Guadalajara, en donde imparte las materias Historia del Cine Mexicano y Cine y Literatura Mexicana. Es miembro de la Red de Investigadores de Cine desde 2009; de la Red de Historiadores de la prensa y periodismo iberoamericano desde 2008; socia de la Intenational Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS) desde 2009, coeditora de la revista electrónica Forum for Interamerican Research (FIAR) desde 2009. Ha publicado artículos relacionados con el tema del periodismo cinematográfico y sobre el cine mexicano en publicaciones nacionales y extranjeras. Fue la co-organizadora general del II Congreso Bianual de la Asociación de Estudios Interamericanos. Cruzando fronteras en las Américas: Dinámica de cambios en la política, la cultura y los medios, realizado del 26-28 de septiembre de 2012 en la Universidad de Guadalajara.