The Female Experience in Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Peru

Daniella Fernandez

The history of women's participation in literary culture and political life in Latin America is a history still in the making. From Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Luisa Capetillo to Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Rita Segato, women have shaped and reshaped history, culture, and politics but their contributions have often been forgotten. Join professors Erika Almenara, Lucy M. Brown and Violeta Lorenzo at 1 p.m. Wednesday, April 3, in Old Main 203, where they will highlight some of the women who transformed politics, labor, literature and daily life in Latin America.

Almenara, associate professor of Spanish and associate director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program at the University of Arkansas, was a Fulbright Senior Scholar (Peru 2022-2023) and is the current president of the Peru Section of the Latin American Studies Association.

Her research and teaching interests include Andean oral, written, and visual culture; literary, critical, subaltern, and post-colonial theory, radical thought and avant-garde aesthetics in the Andes and the Southern Cone, as well as feminist and transfeminist theory. Along with her book, The Language of the In-Between. Travestis, Post-hegemoy, and Writing in Contemporary Chile and Peru published (University of Pittsburg Press, 2022) Almenara has published six book chapters, five articles in non-refereed journals, and twelve articles in refereed journals.

Brown, a clinical professor of advertising and public relations, is responsible for increasing students' understanding and skills in marketing communications with an emphasis on media planning, advertising creative strategy and account planning. In addition to teaching, she is responsible for advising the student professional clubs (Ad Club and Public Relations Student Society of America) in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media.

Violeta Lorenzo earned her Ph.D. in Latin American literature from the University of Toronto in 2011. Her area of specialization is Latin American literature, with a primary research focus in the study of Hispanic Caribbean cultures and diasporas. Other research and teaching interests include coming of age narratives, cultural essays, film, and U.S.-Caribbean politics and cultures. Lorenzo's book, A base de palos: modernidad, aprendizaje y formación en cinco Bildungsromane puertorriqueños (Ediciones Katatay, 2023) analyzes —from a historical and postcolonial perspective that focuses on discourses of racial, political, and national identities— five award-winning Bildungsromane or best-sellers written by Puerto Rican authors who began publishing between the 1940s and the 1970s. Lorenzo has also published articles in La Habana Elegante and in La Torre.