Spanish Studies Latin American & Latino Studies Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Environmental Studies Department
Winter 2025: Tuesdays 2-4pm by appt. slot https://tinyurl.com/w25AMS
Humanities Academic Services
PhD, The Johns Hopkins University
MA, Michigan State University
BA, Michigan State University
Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Quechua
20th- & 21st-century Latin American literatures and cultures, Amazonia, Andes, Environmental Humanities, Liquid Humanities, Spatial Humanities, Sound Studies, Indigenous Studies, Archival Preservation & Digital Research Infrastructure
For prospective graduate students: The UCSC Literature Department is unique in that it brings together faculty members who at most other US institutions would work in different departments. What this means for our graduate program is that students can design bold and imaginative projects that build on diverse areas of expertise. We are particularly strong in Latin American literary and cultural studies, with faculty members Juan Poblete, Zac Zimmer, and myself; as well as hemispheric Americanists such as Kirsten Silva-Gruesz and Susan Gillman; and a close relationship to the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies. I am currently accepting students working in contemporary Latin American literature and cultures, especially those interested in the Environmental Humanities and Sound Studies.
Professor Smith's research explores cultural responses to environmental crises in Latin America, with particular emphasis on Amazonian and Andean contexts. Her book, Mapping the Amazon: Literary Geography after the Rubber Boom (Liverpool University Press, 2021), examines how stories told about the Amazon in canonical twentieth-century novels both wrote against and upheld extractivist visions of the region that continue to impact it today. Her next book project, The Nature of Conflict: Rivers, Resilience, and Reconciliation in Colombia, considers a context in which rivers are gaining rights as victims of Colombia's armed conflict and asks how art, literature, and film might exceed, and therefore complement legal language that tries to make sense of nonhuman experiences of war. Other work has appeared in The Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies;Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society; Revista de Estudios Hispánicos; The Journal of West Indian Literatures; ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America; A contracorriente; Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures; and Ciberletras. Professor Smith is also a co-editor of The Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, former director of a Modern Endangered Archives Program grant to digitize the collections of the Biblioteca Amazónica in Iquitos, Peru, and current director of an Endangered Archives Programme grant from the British Library to continue this work in Iquitos.
National Endowment for Humanities: Awards for Faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Book Project, The Nature of Conflict: Rivers, Violence, and Healing in Colombia after the Peace Accords, $50,000, 2025-2026.
Best Publication: Latin American Studies Association, Archives, Libraries, and Digital Scholarship Section, "Extractivism and the Ecology of Research Infrastructure: Digitizing Precarious Materialities in Iquitos, Peru," 2024.
"Una conversación sobre La vorágine," Feria del Libro de Manizales, Universidad de Caldas, August 28, 2024.
"Presentación de libro: Mapping the Amazon: Literary Geography after the Rubber Boom," Feria del Libro de Manizales, Universidad de Caldas, August 27, 2024.
Roundtable: "La vorágine a 100 años / 100 años de La vorágine: Nuevas aproximaciones a la obra de José Eustasio Rivera en el centenario de su publicación", Latin American Studies Association, Bogotá, June 12, 2024.
"The River Beyond Its Banks: Testimonios of the Guayabero Basin," Duke University Amazon Lab, May 3, 2024.
"Listening for Absence: Podcasting More-than-human Conflict in Colombia," Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Boston, MA, March 14, 2024.
Roundtable: "Latin American Ecocriticism: What's Next?" MLA, Philadelphia (virtual session), January 7, 2024.
Keynote Address: "Fluvial Forms of Care: The Magdalena River as Tomb and Teacher," Impending Catastrophes through the Ages: Literature and the Arts in the Context of Doom, Department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, University of British Columbia, October 26, 2023.
"Research and the Infrastructure of Extractivism: Digitizing the Biblioteca Amazónica of Iquitos, Perú," University of Chicago, May 17, 2023.
Keynote Address: "Vías extractivas y flujos amazónicos: ecología de la infraestructura de la investigación en Iquitos, Perú." Laboratories of Future Worlds: Ruptures, Futures, and Possibilities, Department of Hispanic Studies, Brown University, April 8, 2023.
"Queering Lima’s Urban Ecology in Islas (2010) by Rodrigo La Hoz," XXXX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, May 5-8, 2022.
"Extractivism in Iquitos: From the Rubber Boom to Ayahuasca Literature." SPAN 535 Environment and Extractivism in Latin American Culture, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, December 1, 2021.
"La vorágine 100 años después." Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad de Caldas, Colombia, November 19, 2021.
"Cartografías literarias amazónicas," Coloquio de Spanish Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, May 24, 2021.
"Queer Ecology in Islas by Rodrigo la Hoz," SPAN 550 - Porn Lit: Critical Approaches to Erotic Literature in Latin America and Spain, Department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, University of British Columbia, March 12, 2021.
Please see Google Scholar for a more complete list of publications.
2024. "La vorágine y la línea fronteriza: Rivera y la Comisión de límites entre Colombia y Venezuela (2021)," La vorágine: centenario de un clásico latinoamericano. Textos críticos (1988-2024), Universidad de los Andes.
2023. "Protests in Peru: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Cultural Crisis," co-authored roundtable with Alejandra Watanabe Farro, Carla Hernández Garavito, Aldair Mejía, Cecilia Méndez, Carlos Molina Vital, Mariela Noles Cotito, and Nelson Pereyra Chávez. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 157-75.
2022. "Imagining Amazonia Cartographically," A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture, 2nd edition, edited by Sara-Castro-Klarén, Wiley Blackwell.
