Etna Ávalos, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Spanish

 

Biography

Dr. Ávalos specializes in contemporary Mexican and Latin American cultural productions, focusing on the representations of disability, gender identity, ethnicity, and exile as forms of resistance. Her second area of study examines transborder and diasporic narratives in Latino/a/x/e literature and cinema. She earned her Ph.D. in Spanish and Latin American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She holds a Master’s degree in Spanish and Latin American Literature from North Carolina State University and a Master’s degree in British Studies and English Literature from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. She completed her undergraduate degree in Communication and Journalism at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Her interdisciplinary research incorporates race, gender, colonial and postcolonial studies, disability theories, history, and philosophy to explore the representation of political and social issues in Mexican and Latin American cultural productions. Her work has been widely published in refereed journals such as Hispanófila, iMex: México Interdisciplinario, Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades, Mexican Studies, Romance Notes, and América sin nombre, among others.

Dr. Ávalos is currently working as the editor of a volume that explores how corporeal representations and bodily narratives of difference are connected to the diasporic experience in Latino/a/x/e literature written in Spanish in the United States.

 

Publications

• Ávalos, Etna. “Género y discapacidad como narrativas decoloniales en la literatura Latinx de Naida Saavedra, Melanie Márquez Adams y Jennifer Thorndike”. Hispanófila. Ensayos de literatura, vol. 200, Spring 2024, pp. 53-65.

• Ávalos, Etna. “Bordes desvanecidos: el espectro femenino como figura de resiliencia en “Real Women have Bodies” y “Eight Bites,” de Carmen Maria Machado.” Bordxs: representaciones de géneros, sexualidades y fronteras. Una aproximación a las literaturas y culturas fronterizas. Eds. Cynthia Meléndrez y Elizabeth Villalobos. California: Artificios, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, U of Colorado, 2023.

• Ávalos, Etna. “Mujeres ‘líquidas’: feminismos y metamorfosis de adaptación en la narrativa de Rosa Beltrán.” Rosa Beltrán: afectos literarios y el arte de narrar. Ed. Oswaldo Estrada. México: Bonilla Artigas, 2023, pp. 211-28.

• Ávalos, Etna. “Marcas de violencia: biopolítica, enfermedad y discapacidad en Teoría de las catástrofes de Tryno Maldonado.” iMex. Mexico Interdisciplinario, Artículos iMex, vol. 1, 2021, pp. 70-83.

• Ávalos, Etna. “Discapacidad, feminismo y sexualidad en Sangre en el ojo de Lina Meruane.” Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades, vol. 44, no.1, 2018, pp. 37-48.