Ethel Barja

Ethel Barja is a Peruvian scholar and educator. Her research and teaching areas include transnational and cross-disciplinary approaches to 20th and 21st-century Latin American and Caribbean literature, poetry, and poetics, which intertwines critical Indigenous studies, Afro-poetics, decolonial studies, gender studies, and posthuman studies. She joined Smith College after having taught at Salisbury University (2022–25) in a tenure-track appointment and at Brown University (2021–22) as a visiting assistant professor. She is also an Award-Winning Author (International Latino Book Awards 2023, 2024; Oversound Chapbook Prize 2021, Cartografía Poética 2019). Her books include Insomnio vocal (2016), Hope is Tanning on a Nudist Beach (2022), and La muda (2023).

She has also published the monograph Poesía e insurrección: la Revolución cubana en el imaginario latinoamericano (Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2023), which examines the transnational rapport between the Caribbean and the Andes, focusing on the impact of the Cuban revolution on the long global sixties’ Latin American poetry (1960s and 1970s). Including authors such as Nicolás Guillén, Nancy Morejón, Gioconda Belli, Ernesto Cardenal, Claribel Alegría, José María Arguedas, among others, this book analyzes how poets interrogated, adapted, or rejected revolutionary aspirations. It argues that from Black, Indigenous, and feminist perspectives, this poetry disrupted the universalizing insurrectional ideals and the polarized language of the Cold War, generating a distinct language for resistance, vindication, and hope.

Her academic articles on (Afro)Caribbean, Latin American, and Andean authors appear in top-tier scholarly journals such as The Afro-Hispanic Review, the Hispanic Journal, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, and Chasqui: revista de literatura y cultura latinoamericana e indígena. These publications represent her persistent work on exploring how literature and historical contexts of crisis inform each other, envisioning social transformations.

She is currently working on two book projects. The first explores 21st-Century Latin American and Caribbean poetry and its intersectional take on posthumanism. The second examines experimental writing, inquiring on historical accountability, the legibility of violence, and cultural memory in contemporary Latin American authors.

Poesía e insurrección: la Revolución cubana en el imaginario latinoamericano [Poetry and Insurrection: The Cuban Revolution in the Latin American Imaginary]. Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2023.

“Queering the Empire: Gender and Decoloniality in Twenty-First Century Latin American Poetry.” The Routledge Handbook of Twenty-First Century Latin American Poetry. Edited by Jorge Locane and Ben Bollig, Routledge, 2025. Forthcoming.

“Quechua Narration and the Cosmopoetics of Memory in Ch’aska Eugenia Anka Ninawaman.” Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana. 54.1 (2025): 31-50.

“Más allá de las rejas: deshumanización, encierro e imaginación en Trilce de Cesar Vallejo.” Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispánica. 99-100 (2024): 204-215.

“La ciudad prismática: Berlín en la narrativa cubana actual.” The Hispanic Journal. 43.1 (2021): 29-45.

​​​“Transmedia Archive: History, Race, and Revolution in El diario que a diario by Nicolás Guillén.” The Afro-Hispanic Review. 39.2 (2020): 11-30.

​​​“Encuentros y virajes entre traducción y poesía.” Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispánica. 91-92 (2020): 287-93.

​​​“Persona de José Carlos Agüero: (Des)figuraciones de la escritura transmedial y el conflicto armado interno en el Perú (1980-2000).” Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana. 48.2 (2019): 315-329.

​​“Aliteraciones del espectáculo en Tres tristes tigres de Guillermo Cabrera Infante.” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana. 88 (2019): 243-261.

​​​“Constelación Berlín. Tránsitos culturales en cuatro autoras hispanoamericanas.” Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispánica 87-88. (2018): 77-84.

“Del individuo al ‘hombre ecuménico’: El imaginario soviético en el pensamiento de César Vallejo.” Vanguardias andinas. México D.F.: Editorial Nómada, 2021. 67-86.

“‘Efecto in-spider’ o el repensar del posthumanismo en la poesía de Elsye Suquilanda (Ecuador/Alemania).” Todo boca arriba: Perspectivas sobre la poesía actual latinoamericana y del Caribe. Osnabrück/Barranquilla: Osnabrück University/ North University, 2019. 187-200.

“Canto Villano: Una poética del hambre.” Canto Villano. Fondo de Cultura Económica del Perú, 2017. 263-268.