Gloria Elizabeth Chacon

Ph.D. (UC Santa Cruz)

Associate Professor

Gloria E. Chacón is Associate Professor in the Literature Department at UCSD. Both her research and teaching focus on indigenous literatures, autonomy, and philosophy. She is the author of Indigenous Cosmolectics: Kab’awil and the Making of Maya and Zapotec Literatures (2018). She is currently working on her second book tentatively titled Metamestizaje, Indigeneity, and Diasporas: Challenging Cartographies. She is co-editor of Indigenous Interfaces: Spaces, Technology, and Social Networks in Mexico and Central America by Arizona Press(2019), co-editor of Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context (2022) for MLA’s Teaching Options Series, and co-editor of Abiayalan Pluriverses: Bridging Indigenous Studies and Hispanic Studies (2023). Chacón’s work has appeared in anthologies and journals in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, Spain, and the USA. She has also co-edited a special issue on indigenous literature for DePaul University.

2014-2015 Hellman Fellowship Award Recipient

BOOKS

• Abiayalan Pluriverses: Bridging Indigenous Studies and Hispanic Studies: Amherst College Press, 2023.

• Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context, MLA’s Teaching Options Series, MLA, 2022.

• Indigenous Interfaces: Spaces, Technology, and Social Networks in Mexico and Central America, University of Arizona Press, 2019.

• Indigenous Cosmolectics: Kab’awil and the Making of Contemporary Maya and Zapotec Literatures, UNC Press, 2018.

CO-EDITED SPECIAL ISSUES

“The Five Cardinal Points in Contemporary Indigenous Literature.” Special Issue of Diálogo: an Interdisciplinary Studies Journal 19.1, 2016.

SELECTED PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES/BOOK CHAPTERS

Co-author. "Literatura centroamericana: entre la tradición y el presente en transformación." Pueblos, movimientos, saberes y migraciones en el istmo centroamericano, edited by Menton et al., São Paulo : Edições EACH: Universidade de Sao Paulo,Vol 2, 2023: 36-78.

"Emiliano Monge's Las tierras arrasadas: Transmigration and Dehumanization in the South-South." Aztlán, Vol 48, 2, F 2023, 161-178.

“Humberto Ak’abal: Indigeneity, Translation, and World Literature.” Central American Literature as Global literature. Edited by Sophie Esch. New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2023: 173-188.

Co-author, “Indigenous Literatures in the Face of Development.” Routledge Handbook on Indigenous Development. Edited by Katharina Ruckstuhl, Irma A. Velásquez Nimatuj, John-Andrew McNeish, and Nancy Postero. London and New York: Routledge, 2023: 427-435.

"Zapotec Literature." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. 21 Dec. 2022; Accessed 17 May. 2024. https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-1360

“Transatlantic Routing and Rooting in Quince Duncan’s Kimbo.”  Writing the Afro-Américas: Literary Interventions from Mexico to the Southern Cone. Edited by Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjivar. Vanderbilt University Press, 2022:83-96.

“Nunca hemos sido humanos: una mirada desde dos fundadores de la literatura zapoteca.” Mingas de la imagen: estudios ecocritícos e interculturales. Edited by Miguel Rocha Vivas, Paola Molano, and Miguel Rojas Sotelo. Bogotá D.C.-Colombia: Editorial Pontífica Universidad Javeriana, 2022: 285-298.

“Poetas indígenas: pluri-versos y el quehacer de sujetos femeninos.” Transgresiones en las letras iberoamericanas: visiones del lenguaje poético. Edited by Laura López Fernández y Luis Mora-Ballesteros. Buenos Aires, Argentina and Los Angeles: Argus-A, 2021: 163-181.

“Exploring Reparations in Mesoamerica.” Wall to Wall Spaces of Law in Latin American and Spanish Contexts. Ed. Carlos Varon et al., CA:Vernon Press, 2021: 81-94.

“Material culture, Indigeneity, and Temporality: The textile as Legal Subject.” Textual Cultures, (2020). 3.2, 2020: 49–69.

“El bilenguaje, la auto-traducción, y los escritores indígenas,” Caleidoscopio verbal: lenguas y literaturas originarias. Edited by Osiris A. Gómez, Sara Poot Herrera, Francisco A. Lomelí. Mexico: Oro de la noche Ediciones, 2020: 109-115

“El nacimiento de la novela indígena y el rechazo a la integración eurocéntrica.” Revista de critica literaria latinoamericana. Año XLVI, no 91, 2020: 39-58.

“La vejez como sabiduría en la novela indígena.” Envejecimiento y vejez en la literatura latinoamericana y caribeña. Edited by Díaz-Tendero Bollain, Aída. España/Mexico: Editorial Tirant Lo Blanch: 2019: 223-240.

“Indian Trouble.” In a special issue dedicated to Latino/a Studies for Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 31, 1-2 (2019), pp.50-61.

“The Assembling of Trans-Indigènitude Through International Circuits of Poetry.” The Routledge Companion to International American Studies. Edited by Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung, Takayuki, Tatsumi. London and New York: Routledge, 2019: 116-125.

“Metamestizaje and the Narration of Political Movements from the South.” Latino Studies, Vol.15. 2 (2017):1-19.

“Bilinguaging the Political Literary Landscape of Maya Tsotsil Autonomous Poetic Projects,” Intro to Snichimal Vayuchil. Translated by Paul Worley. North Dakota Quarterly, 2018.

“The Politics of Enunciation: Indigenista and Contemporary Indigenous Literatures.” The Routledge History of Latin American Culture. Edited by Carlos Salomon. New York and London: Routledge, 2017: 78-93.

“Cultivating Nichimal K’op (Poetry) from the Heart: Indigenous Women of Chiapas.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispanicos ,Vol. 39.1 (2014): 165-180.

“Escritores Mayas contemporáneos: redefiniendo nociones de tradición y autoría.” Diversidad y diálogo intercultural a través de las literaturas en lenguas mexicanas. Mexico, D.F.: ELIAC, 2007: 55-61.

“Poetisas Mayas: subjetividades contra la corriente.” Cuadernos de Literatura 11. 22 (2007): 94-106.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Indigenous Literary Studies

Chicanx/Latinx/Latin American Studies

Literary and Cultural Theory

Critical Gender Studies

Migration and Diasporas

Central American Literary and Cultural Histories

Legal Studies

Archival Studies

Extinction and Literature

Posthumanism

Indigenous Philosophies and Epistemologies