Dr. María Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles
Associate Professor of Spanish
Director of the Americas Initiative
Office: Culture and Society (CU) 286
E-mail: maguilardornelle@fau.edu
Dr. Aguilar Dornelles earned the M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American literature from Washington University in St Louis, MO, where she also completed the graduate certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies in 2011. Her research interests include 19th-century Latin American, Caribbean, and Brazilian literature; Gender Studies; and Afro-Latin American Diaspora Studies. She has published extensively on Caribbean narrative and poetry in such major journals as Confluence, Meridional Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos, Afro-Hispanic Review, and Latin American Literary Review. She also collaborated on the volume Cantos y poemas: antología crítica de autoras afro-descendientes de América Latina, edited by María Mercedes Jaramillo and Betty Osorio.
Dr. Aguilar’s article “Heroísmo y conciencia racial en la poeta afro-cubana Cristina Ayala” was doubly honored: it won both the 2017 Ibero-American Prize for an Academic Article on the Nineteenth Century awarded by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and the Harold Eugene Davis Prize awarded by the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies (MACLAS). Another article, “Activismo, literatura y cambio social en el Caribe hispano: aproximación en tres movimientos,” won the 2020 Adela Zamudio Prize awarded by Feministas Unidas. In 2022, her project “En nombre de la madre: el valor político del heroísmo en la narrativa de Maria Firmina dos Reis” was awarded the Marielle Franco Prize by the Gender and Feminist Studies section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
BOOK
Entre el bronce y el olvido: heroísmo y afrodescendencia en Colombia, Brasil y Cuba [Between Bronze and Oblivion: Heroism and Afro-descendants in Colombia, Brazil and Cuba]. Iberoamericana- Vervuert, 2023. 247 pages.
GUEST EDITOR SPECIAL DOSSIER
Guest co-editor, with Florencia Guzmán, special dossier on “Mujeres negras en los siglos XVIII-XIX. Trabajo, cuerpo y espacialidad,” PerspectivasAfro, vol. 3, no. 1, 2023.
https://revistas.unicartagena.edu.co/index.php/PersAfro/article/view/4417
GUEST EDITOR SPECIAL ISSUE
Guest co-editor, with Vanesa Miseres and Claudia Montero, special issue on “Sufragio femenino en América Latina: alianzas nacionalistas y políticas transnacionales,” Meridional: Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos, vol. 17, 2021.
https://meridional.uchile.cl/index.php/MRD/issue/view/5751
RECENT JOURNAL ARTICLES
“En nombre de la madre: maternidad y antiesclavismo en la narrativa de Maria Firmina dos Reis,” “Mujeres negras en los siglos XVIII-XIX. Trabajo, cuerpo y espacialidad,” PerspectivasAfro, vol. 3, no. 1, 2023, pp. 98-116.
“Paradojas del antiesclavismo ilustrado: Cancros socias (1866) y la intervención de la mujer en el debate abolicionista brasileño.” Revista Iberoamericana, vol. LXXXVIII, no. 284, 2023, pp. 933-61.
https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/revista.2023.89.284.825
“Teatro y sororidad: Maria Angélica Ribeiro en el campo cultural brasileño de mediados del siglo XIX,” REGS, vol. 41, no. 8, 2022, pp. 137-155.
https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/msup/regs/article-abstract/48/1/137/316727/
“Entre la espectacularización y la censura: subjetividades negras en el teatro brasileño de mediados del siglo XIX.” Latin America Theatre Review, vol. 55, no. 1, 2021, pp. 27-52.
“La narrativa revolucionaria de Mirta Yánez: entre la norma y el deseo.” Latin American Research Review, vol. 56, no. 1, 2021, pp. 142-154.
“De máscaras y demonios: criminalización, heroísmo e identidad racial en El fusilamiento del diablo”. Visitas al Patio “Manuel Zapata Olivella, revisitado,” 14.1 (2020): 6-26.
https://revistas.unicartagena.edu.co/index.php/visitasalpatio/article/view/2601
“Activismo, literatura y cambio social en el Caribe hispano: aproximación en tres movimientos.” Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studie,. 2. 1 (2018): 97–111.
https://www.marlasjournal.com/articles/abstract/10.23870/marlas.182/
Aguilar Dornelles, M. A. “Heroísmo y conciencia racial en la poeta afro-cubana Cristina Ayala.” Meridional. Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos “Escritoras latinoamericanas del siglo XIX y primera mitad del XX,” 7 (2016): 179-202.
https://meridional.uchile.cl/index.php/MRD/article/view/43544
INTERVIEWS
“Between Bronze and Oblivion: Heroism and Afro-descendants in Colombia, Brazil and Cuba.” In Conversation with Dean Michael Horswell, Ph.D.
https://www.fau.edu/artsandletters/podcast/
SELECT COURSES
SPW 6939 – Theatre and Performance in Latin America
SPW 6939 – Diasporas and Human Rights in Latin America
LAS 2000 - Introduction to Latin American Studies
HUM 2471 - Racism & Anti-Racism
FOL 3880 - Research and Bibliographic Methods
SPW 4930 - Latin America Short Story: International Seminar
SPN 3400 - Advanced Spanish: Grammar and Conversation