News

On August 27, Dr. Etna Ávalos presented the edited volume Habitar la diferencia: corporalidades disidentes en la literatura latino/americana de Estados Unidos (Albatros Ediciones, 2026) on Hablemos Escritoras.

On Thursday, September 3rd , Amanda Hussein, Ph.D. in American Studies and Culture, gave a presentation entitled “Greener Grass and Fading Color” for the V International Conference “FEmale Creations in Literary and Intercultural Education” V CICELI. The presentation formed part of her dissertation in which she examined the depth of colonized consciousness seen in specific literary pieces in both the Dominican Republic and the United States.

Xinmin Liu, Associate Professor of Chinese-Pullman, has co-edited with Hua Li the volume Ecocriticism and Speculative Fiction in East Asia. “This volume illustrates Asian speculative fiction’s potential to interrogate and inspire humanity’s ecological and ethical responsibilities, seeking to fill a major lacuna in previous academic literature around ecocriticism in speculative fiction.”

Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo, Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies in the Vancouver campus, published her second short story. The story is titled “La oscuridad” and appears in the Spring 2026 issue of the refereed journal Label Me Latina/o. The issue and the short story can be accessed at Label Me Latina/o.

Mary Bloodsworth-Lugo, WSU Vancouver, published a review of The Reflective Age: Nostalgia at the End of History (Rutgers University Press, 2025) by Zachary Griffith in The Journal of Popular Culture.

Amy Hernandez Matsumoto, Adjunct Faculty of Spanish, Vancouver campus, organized an interview with author Javier Zamora, best known for his NYT bestselling memoir, Solito (2022).

Mike Hubert has been elected to the Faculty Status Committee (FSC). His three-year term will begin on August 16, 2026. The FSC is a very important committee and very valuable service at university level.

Etna Ávalos, Assistant Professor of Spanish, authored the chapter, “Partes de guerra como contra-archivo afectivo en el contexto de la violencia de género,” which appears in the edited volume En torno a Jorge Volpi: la razón del discurso, el discurso de la razón.

Samuel Ginsburg just published Untouched: Speculative Visions of Quarantine in the Fiction of Maielis González and Brenda Peynado in Caribbean Studies. Quarantine fiction has emerged as an important genre for understanding the physical, emotional, and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Etna Ávalos has published the book Habitar la diferencia: corporalidades disidentes en la literatura latino/americana de Estados Unidos. The book examines how Spanish-language literature produced by immigrant authors in the United States uses the body as a critical lens to interrogate difference.