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Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez

  • Associate Professor
  • Spanish and Portuguese

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Photo: Santiago  Vaquera-Vásquez

Associate Professor Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez received an appointment in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at The University of New Mexico in 2013. He offers undergraduate and graduate level course focused on the construction of diverse “imaginative geographies” in border spaces, narratives about journeys in Chicano/a literature and culture, the role of popular and culture in the US/Mexico borderlands, among other topics. Vaquera-Vásquez’s research interests center on creative writing, Mexican American cultural studies and literature, U.S. Latino literature and culture, border studies, and 20th and 21st century Latin American literature and cultural studies. His academic work on US/Mexico border cultures has been published in journals and anthologies in Mexico and the United States, and presented at international conferences in Turkey, Spain, Colombia, Peru, the United States, Mexico, the Netherlands and Norway. Author of four collections of short stories, Algún día te cuento las cosas que he visto (2012), Luego el silencio (2014), One Day I’ll Tell You the Things I’ve Seen (2015), and En el Lost y Found (2016), his literary work has been published in anthologies in Spain, Italy, Latin America and the United States. Fellow author Junot Díaz has written that “Santiago Vaquera is literary lightning. He impresses, he illuminates, and when he is at his best you are left shaken, in awe.”


Education

  • PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Santa Barbara (1997)
  • MA in Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Santa Barbara (1992)
  • BA in Spanish/Art Studio, California State University (1989)

Research Areas

  • Mexican American Cultural Studies And Literature
  • US Latino Literature And Culture
  • Border Studies
  • 20th And 21st Century Latin American Literature
  • Cultural Studies


Latin American Studies Courses

  • SPAN 578 Borderland Popular Cultures
  • SPAN 479 Journeys in Chicano(a) Literature and Culture
  • SPAN 579 Borderlands

*Latin America-related courses offered during the past three years*