Contributors
Lauren Beck holds the Canada Research Chair in Intercultural Encounter and is Professor of Hispanic Studies and Director of the Centre for Early Modern Visual Culture at Mount Allison University. She researches visual culture of the transatlantic world at the intersection of identity. Her monograph, Illustrating el Cid, 1498–Today (2019), received the Association of Canadian Hispanists’ biannual book award. Lauren recently published Abiayalan Pluriverses: Bridging Indigenous Studies and Hispanic Studies (with G. Chacón and J. Sánchez) and her demolinguistic study, El Español en Canadá, co-authored with Y. Iglesias, will be published by the Instituto Cervantes in 2025. Her next book, co-authored with A. Mullan, The Cartouche and Identity in Enlightenment Cartography of New Spain, will be published in 2026.
Tania Bride holds a PhD from the University of California Los Angeles. She received an MPhil in Early Modern History from the University of Cambridge for the thesis “The Social Roles of Medical Ritual Practitioners in Colonial Nahua Communities.” Her doctoral dissertation, titled “Entangled Creatures: Dialogues Over Human-Animal Transformation in New Spain (1521–1770),” examines intersecting religious and environmental changes wrought by Spanish colonization in Mexico, through reports and discussions of human beings that adopted nonhuman animal forms. This project draws from archival research in Spain, Mexico, and the United States, as well as in manuscript collections of the John Carter Brown and Newberry Libraries, and is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation and American Society for Environmental History. Tania has presented her research at Latin American Studies Association conferences, the American Society for Ethnohistory conference, Forum on Early Modern Empires and Global Interactions conference, and more.
Elena Campero is an Associate Professor of Spanish at McDaniel College. She studied at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), Argentina, and received her doctorate from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a thesis on the Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio. Her area of specialization is contemporary Latin American literature, with a focus on the Southern Cone. Her research articles have been published in academic journals (Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, Cuadernos LIRICO, Revista Decimonónica, among others) as well as in edited volumes. Elena published her book of poetry in 2013 titled Cuentagotas with Huesos de jibia publishing house.
Odile Cisneros is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. She co-authored the Historical Dictionary of Latin American Literature and Theater (2011) with Richard Young and co-edited Novas: Selected Writings of Haroldo de Campos with A. S. Bessa (2007). Odile has published numerous literary translations, and articles and chapters on Latin American literature with a focus on Mexico and Brazil. Her interest in ecocriticism inspired her project ecopoesia.com, an online resource on the environment and poetry from Latin America. Currently she is working on a monograph and website project titled “Haroldo de Campos: Innovative Poetics for a Plural World,” funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Adrián Collado Icardo received his doctorate in Hispanic Literature from the University of Californa, Los Angeles (UCLA, 2018). He is also a Hispanic philologist (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2007) and holds a degree in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature (Universidad Complutense University de Madrid, 2009). Adrián has worked at various universities in Southern California. His research focuses on different artistic and cultural representations of the migratory phenomenon in Spain. At UCLA, he founded the university’s Latin American and Iberian Film Festival and was a member of the translation and research group Diversifying the Classics. Adrián currently teaches literature in Madrid. In addition, he is a member of the editorial team of the Spanish film magazine Versión Original.
Ailén Cruz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Early Modern Visual Culture at Mount Allison University and publishes the bilingual Substack newsletter Prone to Hyperbole. She previously worked as an Assistant Professor at the Australian National University, where she taught literature and translation. Ailén’s main research stream focuses on the evolution of the bestiary genre from its medieval origins to contemporary Hispanic literature (book forthcoming with McGill-Queen’s University Press). Her peer-reviewed publications include “Nicolás Guillén’s El gran zoo and his Biopolitical Legacy in Three Contemporary Bestiaries” (Hispania, 2022) and “Roque Larraquy’s Informe sobre ectoplasma animal in English Translation” (The AALITRA Review, 2023). She is also interested in questions of the uncanny in Latin American literature and has published on this matter in Romance Notes.
Alba Devo-Colis is an Assistant Professor and holds a doctorate in Hispanic Studies from Western University, and a master’s degree in Humanistic Studies from the Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico (ITESM). Her doctoral dissertation focuses on the genre of autofiction in Mexican literature. Alba’s current research areas are autofiction, women’s literature, radiographies of evil, intersectionality, textual and political corporeality, as well as Spanish pedagogy. Other fields of interest include interartistic relations in literature, literary theory, narratology, and hermeneutics.
Penélope Marcela Fernández Izaguirre is a Mexican researcher, holds a doctorate in literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and is a professor at the Metropolitan Autonomous University. She focuses on the study and research of Spanish medieval literature from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century; she also studies topics related to the functions and characteristics of animals in literature and, in this regard, has co-organized the five editions of the “International Congress of Animalibus: The Zoological Presence in Literature.” Penélope has participated in various national and international conferences with contributions in the fields of rhetoric and classical, medieval, and contemporary literature, and has published works of equal importance.
Irene López-Rodríguez holds an MA in English Language and Literature and an MEd from the University of Extremadura. She has a PhD in Hispanic Studies from the University of Ottawa, where she held a prestigious Joseph-Armand Bombardier scholarship, an Ontario Graduate Studies scholarship, and a University of Ottawa Excellence scholarship. Currently, Irene holds the Margarita Salas post-doctoral fellowship in Spain, where she works in the COIDESO group specializing in gender studies, gender violence, and comparative Spanish-Canadian literature. She has more than thirty-five book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals. Her research interests include the use of animal symbols in the construction of gender, the representation of eating disorders, and discourses of gender violence, both in English and Spanish.
Alejandro Ramírez-Méndez is an Assistant Professor in the School of Languages, Cultures, and Race at Washington State University where he teaches Latin American and Latinx Studies. He completed his PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at UCLA (2018). Prior to starting his doctoral studies, he received a BA in Literature and Language Sciences at the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana (Mexico, 2007), and an MA in Literary Studies (Literatuurwetenschap) at Leiden University (The Netherlands, 2010). His research interests include migration and diaspora in urban literature and culture in Latin America and in the United States. Currently, Alejandro is working on urban narratives from Latinx writers that portray migratory flows of people and ideas in the American city, showing how their works crisscross the political limits of nation-states, while creating transnational geographies and cross-border environments in the historical period of global neoliberalism.
Samantha Penina Ruckenstein holds a PhD in Hispanic Studies from McGill University with a focus on contemporary Spanish literature, particularly the works of Carlos Ruiz Zafón. With an MA in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures (specialization in medieval Iberia) from the University of Toronto and a BA in Hispanic Studies at Queen’s University, her research interests have a primary focus on Peninsular literature as well as Visual and Material Culture Studies. Samantha is currently a Lecturer of Visual and Material Culture Studies at Mount Allison University as well as an Assistant Professor of Spanish through St. Thomas University’s Aotiitj Program on Elsipogtog First Nation. She holds the position of Assistant Professor of Visual and Material Culture Studiesat Mount Allison University.
Alejandro Soifer holds a PhD in Hispanic Studies from the University of Toronto. He is the author of over seven books, including two non-fiction works and four novels. His doctoral dissertation on Gothic representations in contemporary Mexican literature was turned into a special episode of CBC’s (Canadian public radio) “Ideas: In the Trenches” show. Alejandro’s book manuscript, The Gothic Turn: Counterfeit History, Mexican Narconarratives, and Vampires with Machine Guns, currently under contract with Vanderbilt University Press, explores how contemporary Mexican narratives have created a state-sponsored mythology of narco-violence that shifts the focus away from the economic and legislative precarity associated with Mexico’s war on drugs and neoliberal reforms. He is currently a Faculty of Arts and Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto and has been awarded the SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, beginning in September 2025 at Western University.