I teach Latin American literature and cultural studies, often in combination with Spanish language and gender studies. I am interested in the intersections of culture and politics, particularly ways that social movements shape cultural production, and ways cultural forms, in turn, impact social change.
My current research involves the interrelated topics of: (1) memory projects after dictatorships in Latin America (monuments, memorials, museums, other forms of cultural production) and the influences of neoliberalism and authoritarianism on them; and (2) the politics of violence and issues of representation in fiction and non-fiction about the US-Mexico borderzone.
To get a sense of my first book, Political Bodies: Gender, History, and the Struggle for Narrative Power in Recent Chilean Literature (Bucknell University Press, 2002), listen to my dialogue with Leonard Schwartz on the radio show “Cross-cultural Poetics,” KAOS-89.3FM, October 2006 (http://writing.upenn.edu/ pennsound/x/XCP.html). Play the interview here: XCP_114_Nelson_10-08-06.mp3