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Carol Arcos H.

Assistant Professor

Biography

Office Hours

Professor Carol Arcos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Literature. Her research brings together cultural studies, anti-colonial feminisms, and cuir/queer studies in Latin America, with a focus on the politics of maternity, social reproduction, and the labor of care. 

Her scholarship has appeared in journals and edited volumes published in the United States, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Spain. She has also edited collective projects, including the first contemporary history of Chilean literature. Her forthcoming book, The Maternal Wound: Somatic Forces and Posmaternities in Latin American Feminist Culture (19th – 21st Centuries) is a work of cultural studies that traces how feminist fictions dislocate colonial modernity’s reproductive rationality in Latin America from the 19th century to the present. Adopting a genealogical, biopolitical, transnational, and transinclusive perspective, it theorizes maternity as a wound and a non-binary somatic function. 

Working across scholarship, poetry, and nonfiction, Professor Arcos is the author of the poetry collection Opacal (2019), published in Spain, and her poetry has appeared in national and international journals and collaborative publications. She is currently completing a nonfiction book, Las casas de Pinochet: una memoria villera (The Houses of Pinochet: A Villera Memoir), an autobiographical and political chronicle about growing up in a villa, a state-subsidized housing estate built on the periphery of Santiago de Chile during Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1990).

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, English

UCSD Hellman Fellow

Affiliated Faculty: Latin American Studies Program, Critical Gender Studies Program, Global South Studies Program, Black Diaspora and African American Studies Program, MFA Program in Writing

Publications

Historia crítica de la literatura chilena: Volumen I. La era colonialOpacalExploracionesHistoria crtica de la literatura chilena

Books

  • Opacal [poetry book]. Spain: Ediciones Oblicuas, 2020.
  • With Grínor Rojo (Eds.), Historia crítica de la literatura chilena. Vol II. La era republicana. Independencia y formación del Estado nacional. [Critical History of Chilean Literature. Vol. II. The Republican Era. Independence and Formation of the Nacional State]. Chile: LOM Editores, 2018. 
  • With Grínor Rojo (Eds.), Historia crítica de la literatura chilena. Vol I. La era colonial. [Critical History of Chilean Literature. Vol. I. The Colonial Era]. Chile: LOM Editores, 2017. 
  • Exploraciones [Explorations]. Chile: University Finis Terrae, 2014. 

Articles & Book Chapters

  • “Cuidar para matar: instinto, delito y castigo en las escrituras extrañas del Cono Sur.” [Caring to Kill: Instinct, Crime, and Punishment in the Weird Writings of the Southern Cone]. In press. Hispamérica, 165, 2027. 
  • “The Insubordination of the Gaze: Marian Icon and Performance in the Mujeres Creando Collective.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 33, Issue 2, 2024, pp. 319-339.
  • “La hybris de lo materno en la imagen de Zaida González Ríos.” [The Hubris of the Maternal in the Image of Zaida González Ríos]. Maternidades imaginadas: representaciones y disidencias en el siglo XXI. Edited by Marina Bettaglio and Olga Albarrán. Editorial Cuarto Propio, 2024, pp. 31-58.
  • “La ley siniestra de la madre en Mapocho de Nona Fernández.” [The Uncanny Law of the Mother in Mapocho by Nona Fernández] Transmodernity. Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World. n. 9, 2022, pp. 117-137.
  • “Rosario Orrego Castañeda (1831/4-1879) and the Proto-Feminist Writing Scene.” A History of Chilean Literature. Edited by Ignacio López-Calvo. England: Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp. 119-137.
  • “Biopolítica de lo materno: familia y feminismo tras la guerra del Pacífico.” [Biopolitics of the Maternal: Family and Feminism after the Pacific War]. Ni amar ni odiar con firmeza. Cultura y emociones en el Perú posbélico (1885-1925). Edited by Francesca Denegri. Lima: Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, 2019, pp. 279-303.
  • “Feminismos latinoamericanos: deseo, cuerpo y biopolítica de lo materno.” [Latin American Feminisms: Desire, Body and Biopolitics of the Maternal]. Debate Feminista, n. 55, 201, 2018, pp. 27-58.
  • “Alberto, el jugador (1860).” [Alberto, the Gambler]. Historia crítica de la literatura chilena, vol. II. Volume coordinator: Bernardo Subercaseaux. Edited by Grínor Rojo and Carol Arcos. Chile: LOM Editores, 2018, pp. 261-265.
  • “Rosario Orrego de Uribe.” Historia crítica de la literatura chilena, vol. II. Volume coordinator: Bernardo Subercaseaux. Edited by Grínor Rojo and Carol Arcos. Chile: LOM Editores, 2018, pp. 253-260. 
  • With Kottow Andrea, “Sociabilidad literaria.” [Literary Sociability]. Historia crítica de la literatura chilena, vol. II. Volume coordinator: Bernardo Subercaseaux. Edited by Grínor Rojo and Carol Arcos. Chile: LOM Editores, 2018, pp. 375-396.
  • “Figuraciones autoriales: la escritura de mujeres chilenas en el siglo XIX (1840-1890).” [Authorial Figurations: Chilean Women’s Writing in the 19th Century]. Revista Iberoamericana, n.254, 2016, pp. 45-69. 
    • Reprinted with revisions “Autoría femenina y literature.” [Female Authorship and Literature]. Historia crítica de la literatura chilena, vol. II. Volume coordinator: Bernardo Subercaseaux. Edited by Grínor Rojo and Carol Arcos. LOM Editores, 2018, pp. 281-306.
  • With Alicia Salomone, “(Des)apegos identitarios: literatura, nación y género en la narrativa de mujeres sudamericanas de mediados del siglo XIX.” [Identitarian (Un)bounding: Literature, Nation and Gender in the Narrative of South American Women of the Mid-nineteenth Century]. Fronteiras lingüísticas e literárias na América Latina. Edited by Germana Araújo Sales. Brazil: Pontes Editores, 2016, p.p. 11-29.
  • With Alicia Salomone, “Autoría, espiritualismo y educación femenina en el relato de viajes de Maipina de la Barra (1878).” [Authorship, Spiritualism and Feminine Education in the Travel Story of Maipina de la Barra (1878)]. Redes, alianzas y afinidades: escritura de mujeres en América Latina, siglos XIX y XX. Edited by Carolina Alzate y Darcie Doll. Bogotá – Santiago de Chile: University of Los Andes and University of Chile, 2014, pp. 17-29. 
  • With Alicia Salomone, “Mujeres e Independencia en Chile. La cultura del trato y la escritura de cartas.” [Women and Independence in Chile. The Culture of Manners and the Culture of Writing Letters]. Revista de literatura brasileña, n. 12-13, 2013, pp. 205-221.
  • “Novelas-folletín y la autoría femenina en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX en Chile.” [Serial Novels and Female Authorship in the Second Half of the 19th Century in Chile]. Revista chilena de literatura, 76 2010, pp. 27-42.
  • “Musas del hogar y la fe: la escritura pública de Rosario Orrego de Uribe.” [Muses of Home and Faith: The Public Writing of Rosario Orrego de Uribe]. Revista chilena de literatura, n. 74, 2009, pp. 5-28
  • “Sujetos de controversia: aportes para una bibliografía sobre las mujeres en el siglo XVIII y la Ilustración.” [Contributions to a Bibliography on Women in the 18th Century and the Enlightenment]. Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana, n. 67, 2008, pp. 111-122.
  • “Maternidad y travestismo: cuerpos de mujeres en el Mercurio peruano de historia, literatura y noticias públicas (1791-1795).” [Maternity and Transexuality: Women’s Bodies in the Mercurio Peruano (1791-1795)]. Revista de historia de las mujeres, vol. 15, 2008, pp. 297-323.
  • “Boletines feministas del Círculo de estudios de la mujer, 1980-1983.” [Feminist Pamphlets from the Women’s Studies Circle, 1980-1983]. Prácticas culturales, discursos y poder en América Latina. Edited by Rebeca Errázuriz et.al. Chile: CECLA, University de Chile, 2008, pp. 145-161.
  • “Guadalupe Santa Cruz: la memoria en la ciudad.” [Guadalupe Santa Cruz: Memory in the City], Revista Electrónica Litterae Nacional, 10, 2006. 

Shorter Creative Work

  • “Poema de las muertas.” In press. Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, Indiana University Press, 2026. 
  • “Pechos dobles (los míos).” Journal of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Michigan State University Press, 45, 2019, pp. 233-236.

Book Reviews

  • “Maribel Mora Curriao y Fernanda Moraga (Ed.): Kümedungun/Kümewirin. Antología poética de mujeres mapuche (siglos XX-XXI).” [Kümedungun/Kümewirin. Poetic Anthology of Mapuche Women (XX-XXI Centuries). Meridional. Revista chilena de estudios latinoamericanos, n. 1, 152-156, 2013. 

Public Humanities Work

Digital Humanities

Education

  • Ph.D. in Latin American Cultural Studies, University of Chile, 2014
  • M.A. in Literature, Literary Theory, University of Chile, 2008
  • B.A. in Spanish, University of Santiago de Chile, 2004
  • Profesor de Estado, Chile, 2004