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Ariana E. Vigil

Druscilla French Distinguished Professor and Chair Professor

Smith Building 206
919-962-3369

Fall 2023 Office Hours:

If you’re interested in speaking with me, you can sign up for a meeting during office hours

Teaching and Research

I am a scholar of U.S. Latinx literature and culture, broadly trained in U.S. Ethnic Studies, literature, and feminist thought and theory. I am interested in and committed to examining inequality and organizing and doing so from an intersectional perspective; this commitment includes difficult conversations about power, identity, and marginalization. Like many in the U.S. and around the world I am deeply concerned about the ongoing crisis in Gaza, Israel and the occupied territories and in a continuous process of educating myself. I am also increasingly concerned about the silencing of particular voices and movements, including attacks on individual professors as well as organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. For those interested in deepening their understanding of the roots of the conflict and encountering voices that are often not heard, I offer the following reading list:

Angel, Arielle. “We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other.” Jewish Currents. October 12,

Elia, Nada. “Justice is indivisible: Palestine as a feminist issue”. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. Vol. 6, No. 1, 2017, pp. 45-63.

Jadaliyya Reports. “Gender Studies Departments in Solidarity with Palestinian Feminist Collective.” Jadaliyya. May 18, 2021..

Qutami, Loubna. “Why Feminism? Why Now? Reflections on the ‘Palestine is a Feminist Issue” Pledge. Spectre Journal/ May 3, 2021.

Rich, Adrienne. “Why Support the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel?” Monthly Review Online, 2009.

Saliba, Theresa. “June Jordan’s Songs of Palestine and Lebanon” . The Feminist Wire. Mar 24, 2016.

Segal, Raz. “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” Jewish Currents. October 13, 2023..

United Nations. “Gaza: Forcing patients to flee hospitals a ‘death sentence’ warns WHO.” UN News. October 14, 2023..

My teaching and research focus on U.S. Latinx literature and culture. In particular, I examine how gender, race, sexuality, and class are deployed in various national and transnational contexts. My first book, War Echoes: Gender and Militarization in U.S. Latina/o Cultural Production, Rutgers University Press, 2014, analyzes how U.S. Latinx authors and activists responded to U.S. military intervention in Central America and the Middle East. The book enacts a transnational feminist praxis in its incorporation of the voices of subjects located within and without the U.S. nation-state and in its attention to the work of both authors and activists.

I am also dedicated to expanding the traditional boundaries of U.S. Latinx Studies to incorporate Central American-American communities, a commitment evidenced in my book Understanding Francisco Goldman, University of South Carolina Press, 2018, focused on the award-winning Guatemalan-American novelist and journalist.

My most recent book is Public Negotiations: Gender and Journalism in Contemporary US Latina/o Literature, Ohio State University Press, 2019. This study examines how the boundaries of the Latina/o public sphere are negotiated through mass media. Focusing on a wide range of twentieth- and twenty-first century Latina/o literary texts that feature Latina/o media figures—works by Lucha Corpi, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Cherríe Moraga, and Rubén Salazar, among others—my book examines the relationship between Latina/o media and Latina/o publics and reflects on how literature demonstrates a sustained interest in this relationship. Public Negotiations also reveals how these conversations inevitably engage with gender concerns, showing how the role of gender in this relationship is neither static nor consistent over time

I am currently working on a project that examines portrayals of migrant mothers in Latinx cultural production. Additionally, I am an affiliate of the Program in Latina/o Studies.

Other recent publications include:
Julián Castro’s Ambivalent Dream, part of Presidential Campaign Autobiographies 2020, American Literary History. 03 March 2020.

A Journey to/through Family: Nostalgia, Gender and the American Dream in Reyna Grande’s The Distance Between Us, co-authored with Alicia Muñoz; in Frontiers: Journal of Women’s Studies, vol 40, no. 2, September 2019. p 219-242.

Latina/o Literature and War: Gendered Combat Zones, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, Oxford University Press,April 2019.

The Visionary Power of Chicana Girls in Virginia Grise’s blu, Label Me Latina/o, Spring 2019, vol. IX.

Heterosexualization and the State: The Poetry of Gloria Anzaldúa, published in Chicana/Latina Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 2016.

These articles can be downloaded from my personal website.

Courses regularly taught:
WMST 233: Introduction to Latina Feminist Literature

WMST 465: Gender, Im/migration and Labor in U.S. Latina/o Literature

WMST 790: Graduate Seminar in Women’s and Gender Studies