María Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles

Associate Professor of Spanish

María Alejandra 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. She is currently working on a book-length project entitled Herederos de la libertad: heroísmo y afrodescendencia en Colombia, Brasil y Cuba. 
 
Selected publications
Aguilar Dornelles, M. A.“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
 
Aguilar Dornelles, M. A. “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