Lena Burgos-Lafuente

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Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies (Fall 24)
1142 Humanities Building. Phone: 609.632.7457

An Associate Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature, and former director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center, Professor Burgos-Lafuente specializes in Caribbean literatures, poetry, Latin American essay writing, sound studies, and transatlantic literary crossings in the first half of the twentieth century. She received her PhD from New York University in 2011 and was named a recipient of the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2014-2015. Burgos-Lafuente is the author of A la escucha del destiempo: poéticas de la posguerra en el Caribe transatlántico (Iberoamericana Vervuert), editor of Untendered Eyes: Literary Politics of Julia de Burgos (CENTRO Journal, 2014), co-editor of María Zambrano in Dialogue (Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2015) and Cartas a Consuelo (Folium, 2014), Julia de Burgos’s unpublished correspondence to her sister. She is also co-editor of The Puerto Rico Reader: History, Culture, Politics, under contract to Duke University Press. Burgos-Lafuente was named the 2019-20 Wilbur Marvin Scholar of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University for her current project, A la izquierda de la izquierda: Cosmopolitan Communisms in Early to Mid-Twentieth Century Caribbean (1920-1959).

Selected publications:

• “Los amarres de la lengua: Politics, Exiles, and the Disputes over Language in Puerto Rico (1942–2016)” Cecilia Enjuto-Rangel, Sebastiaan Faber, Pedro García-Caro and Robert P. Newcomb, eds., The Transatlantic Studies Reader: Iberia, Africa and Latin America. Liverpool, IJ: Liverpool University Press, (Forthcoming 2017).
• “Cinco caras de Julia.” Revista Exégesis 27/28 (Primavera 2016): 391-99.
• “¿Qué es entonces una isla: ruinas, isla y escritura en el Caribe de María Zambrano.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 16.4 (Winter 2015): 375-396.
• “Yo, múltiple: las cartas de Julia de Burgos”. Prologue to Cartas a Consuelo (1939-1953). San Juan: Ediciones Folium, 2014, xxi-xxxiv.
• “Untendered Eyes: Literary Politics of Julia de Burgos (Introducción)” CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 26.2 (Fall 2014): 4-25.
• “Tiempo de isla: Pedro Salinas y los trópicos típicos.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Washington University, St. Louis 44 (2010): 107-126.
• Melancólicas inquisiciones: lectura y sujeto en Borges. Followed by Conversación con Sylvia Molloy. Recipient of the Concha Meléndez Award for Literary Criticism. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 2006.

Recently taught courses:

PhD seminars:

SPN 671 Transatlantic Caribbean: Oceanic Literatures and the Idea of Hispanism
SPN 671 Siglo XX: la noción de siglo y las políticas literarias del Caribe
SPN 671 The Literary Caribbean: Aesthetics, Politics and Archipelagic Thought
SPN 671 Writing Ruins: Time, Modernity and Decay in 20th Century Latin American Literature

MA Seminars:

SPN 573 Writing Political Violence in Contemporary Caribbean
SPN 573 Escritura y confín: poéticas del encierro en América Latina

Undergraduate seminars:

SPN 405 Nueva York: Escritura y ciudad (1855-2018)
SPN 415 Revolutionary Islands: Modern Caribbean Art and Politics
SPN 435 Before the Law: Writing, Order and Desire in Latin American Literary Culture

HUS 254 Latin America Today. The Caribbean: Culture, Power, Aesthetics