Associate Professor of Spanish I specialize in contemporary Latin American literatures and cultures, with a focus on Mexican narrative. I currently serve as the Graduate Coordinator for the Department of Romance Languages, and I teach a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses ranging from general surveys of Spanish American literature and cultural trends to specialized courses on contemporary Mexican cultural topics, ecocriticism, and disaster studies. Most of my research focuses on the cultural processes of modernity in Latin America, touching on topics ranging from encyclopedic fiction to disaster literature, migration, and cultural mediations of the environment. I have published work in the Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Latin American Research Review, Moving Worlds, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and Symposium, among other venues. My book on Disaster Writing: The Cultural Politics of Catastrophe in Latin America appeared in the University of Virginia Press in 2011. My most recent work focuses on ecocritical topics including the problems that the Amazon River System has posed to nationalistic territorialization and the construction of empiricist subjectivities and the relations between colonialism and the construction of the human/animal divide. I recently co-edited a volume on Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America together with Brazilian professor Zélia Bora and a special issue of Ecozon@ on Southern Atlantic ecocriticism with Luis Iñaki García-Prádanos. I am currently working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled The Rights of Nature and the Testimony of Things: Environmental Ethics from Latin America. Research Research Interests: Mexican Narrative, Disaster Studies, Latin American Ecocriticism, the Total Novel Awards, Honors and Recognitions Of note: Mark specializes in contemporary Latin American literatures and cultures, with a focus on Mexican narrative. He currently serves as the Graduate Coordinator for the Department of Romance Languages, and teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses ranging from general surveys of Spanish American literature and cultural trends to specialized courses on contemporary Mexican cultural topics, ecocriticism, and disaster studies.
