Research Interests
My research explores the intersections of poetic forms and materiality in contemporary Latin(x) American cultural production. I focus on how poets and artists engage with residual materials to challenge dominant historical narratives and resist monumentalization. Through a feminist, queer and critical theory theoretical lens, I investigate how these poetics reconfigure notions of identity and political resistance, offering alternative frameworks for understanding marginalized voices. My work particularly addresses themes of gendered violence, feminicide, post-dictatorship trauma, and racial marginalization, highlighting how memory serves as a site of both fragility and liberation in response to neoliberal erasure.
Monograph: Poetic Traces: Latin(x) American Objects, Archives, Dust
My first book project, examines how Latin(x) American poets and artists use transient materials—such as dust, water, and sound—to question conventional memory-making practices. Focusing on the works of Mario Bellatín, Graciela Iturbide, Cecilia Vicuña, Óscar Muñoz, Valeria Luiselli, and Guillermo Galindo, I explore how these figures engage with poetic forms as a means of resisting fixity and closure in memory. Through their experimentation with fragments and dislocated origins, these artists critique the hegemonic control of memory while proposing non-linear, unpredictable forms of memorialization. Their works offer a fluid, open-ended approach to memory as a site of ongoing political struggle.
Second Book: Sound Weavings: Politics of Life, Care, and Intimacy in Latin(x) America
My second book project extends my work around sound and the everyday to focus on Latin(x) American women-identifying poets and collective formations. It will explore how the works of diverse figures reveal the intersections between sound and poetry. I will emphasize creative expressions emerging from gossip, hair salons, hallways, streets, performances, and collaborative writings. My focus is on how the shared language in textual-oral narratives in these settings serves as a pathway for forging unexpected alliances that resurfaces historical channels of solidarity and intimacy.
Scholarly Articles
“To come: tatiana de la tierra y las formas del deseo”, in LASA Forum, Dossier Borderlands 2.0. Las nuevas fronteras
“Archivos vivientes: vistas, sonidos y cantos en Border Cantos de Guillermo Galindo y Richard Misrach,” in Latin American Literary Review. April 16, 202a.
“Eyes and Wings: Graciela Iturbide’s Bird Images”. in photographies, Vol 17. No. 1-2, 2024.
“Performance in the Wake/Cuerpas ante lo politico. An Introduction,” co-author and co-editor in the special issue “Performance in the Wake”. In Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, 2022
“Cecilia Vicuña’s Bodies in Space” in the special issue“Performance in the Wake”. In Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 1-21., 2022
“Flows of breath: Oscar Muñoz’s Unfolding Images”. Discourse, 43.2, pp. 286-310, 2021. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/794605
Review of “Biopolíticas de la visualidad en la necrópolis contemporánea”, by Javier Guerrero. Revista Taller de Letras, UC, no. 67, 2020
“Towards a Minor Art.” Section “Debate” in the dossier Filosofía y violencia: Voces femenina. In Ideas y Valores Revista colombiana de filosofía, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2019 .
“Comentarios a Acosta, María del Rosario Memory and Fragility: Art’s Resistance to Oblivion (Three Colombian Cases)”. Section “Debate” in the dossier Filosofía y violencia: Voces femenina. In Ideas y Valores Revista colombiana de filosofía, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2019.
Selected Conferences Papers
“Poéticas de larga duración: cuerpo, afecto y desobediencia”, LASA, París, May 2026
“Sonic Activism”, MLA, Toronto, CA, January 2026.
“María José Arjona’s Corporeal Media and Temporal Disobedience”, Moving Media in the Americas, New Orleans, December, 2025
“Jesusa Rodríguez, una intimidad radical” LASA, San Francisco, CA, May 23-27, 2025.
“Pulling the Strings: Feminist Friendship and Literary Activism” MLA, New Orleans, January 2025
“Materias silenciosas: voz, imagen y texto”, LASA, Bogotá, Colombia, June 12-15, 2024.
“Cecilia Vicuña’s Ephemeral Writings” MLA, Philadelphia, PA, January 4-7, 2024.
“Restos epidérmicos: prótesis, visualidad y escritura”, LASA, Vancouver, BC, May 24-27, 2023.
“Images in Flux”. Photographies Conference, San Antonio, Texas, September 22-24, 2022.
“Ecos del desierto: voz, archivo y escritura”, Latin American Studies Association (LASA), Virtual Conference, May 5-10, 2022.
“Cuerpos vibrantes, materias sonoras: Desierto sonoro (2019) de Valeria Luiselli”. Mexicanistas, University of California, Irvine, April 28-30, 2022.
“Vaporous traces: ink, water, dust”. Northeast Modern Languages Association (NeMLA), Baltimore, MD, March 10-13, 2022
“Doble exposición: retratos, autorretratos y fantasmas.” Escrituras y políticas de la mirada en la literatura chilena e hispanoamericana, Universidad de Chile, Virtual Conference, August 26-27, 2021.
Isabella Vergara C. 