NCID-1228
Maria Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles
Assistant Professor of Spanish
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters at Florida Atlantic University
Education/Degree:
1 Hispanic Studies Hispanic Studies (Washington University in Saint Louis)
About
Dr. Aguilar Dornelles was born in Uruguay and moved to USA in 2005 to complete her PhD in Hispanic studies. Her research interests include 19th Century Latin-American literature, Caribbean literature, Brazilian literature, Gender Studies, and Afro-Latin American Diaspora. She has published articles on Caribbean narrative and poetry in journals such as Confluence, Meridional Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos, Afro-Hispanic Review and Latin American Literary Review. She has also collaborated in the volume "Cantos y poemas: antología crítica de autoras afro-descendientes de América Latina," edited by María Mercedes Jaramillo and Betty Osorio.
Current Work
Focusing on the Luso-Hispanic Black Atlantic, Dr. Aguilar Dornelles' research addresses questions pertaining to racial and gender identities vis-à-vis the nation-building process and transnational movements for equal rights. Currently, she is working on a book-long project tentatively titled “Engendering Black Abolitionism” examines nineteenth-century Brazilian cultural productions to emphasize the political significance of female figures in antislavery narratives as a strategy to hide women's political involvement. Focusing on four concepts - labor, justice, care, and abolition - this book project tackles the importance of social practices shaping Afro-descendants’ struggles in a slave society. By recovering unpublished documents and little-know authors, this project builds a narrative around Afro Brazilian’s contribution to what she calls a “poetics of liberation.”
Research Area Keyword(s)
Afro Latin American literature, Afro-descendants women in Latin America, Black heroism in the Atlantic