- nvillafuertevazquez@ucsd.edu
- (858) 822-5644
-
6th College Bldg 1/Ridge Walk
Room 376
Mail Code: 0410
Nadia Villafuerte
Assistant Professor
- Profile
- Publications
- Research/Creative Interests
Profile
Nadia Villafuerte (Chiapas, 1978) studied music, literature, and journalism in Mexico. She has received grants from the National Foundation for Culture and Arts, the Foundation for Mexican Literature, the Fellowship for Academic Excellence and Studies Abroad CONACYT-FONCA, and a Mexican national grant for an artistic residency in New York City in 2013. She has published three fiction books: Barcos en Houston (Mexico, 2005, translated into English and published as Ships in Houston in the U.S. in 2023), ¿Te gusta el látex, cielo? (Mexico, 2008), and Por el lado salvaje (Mexico, 2011). She is part of the literary anthologies México20: New Voices, Old Traditions (U.K., 2015, as part of the British Council/HAY Festival), and Palabras mayores, nueva narrativa mexicana (Spain, 2015), among others. Villafuerte received an MFA in the Creative Writing Program in Spanish at NYU and a PhD from the same university. As a scholar and professor, she has received the Global Research Initiative (GRI), the Migration Network Award, the Outstanding Teaching Award, and the Penfield Fellowship (all at NYU).
Villafuerte is working on her book “The Forgotten Southern Mexican Passage: a History of Violence, Expulsion, Memory and Resistance,” where she analyzes an array of contemporary Mexican cultural productions (fiction, poetry, documentaries, films, photography, and performance) that offer insights into a historical landscape where violence, expulsion but also the memory of its inhabits (migrants, refugees, and locals) make visible the overlooked Mexico-Guatemala region. Additionally, she is writing an essay that will be part of her second research project: an ephemeral archive documenting the lives of Haitian women who work as braiders in Tapachula, a southern Mexican city on the border with Guatemala and the first stop for many refugees and asylum seekers toward the U.S.