Maria del Pilar Melgarejo

María del Pilar Melgarejo is a lecturer in the Department of World Languages and Literatures. She is currently the Faculty in Residence of Cockrell-McIntosh Commons at SMU. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the Department of World Languages and Literatures. María del Pilar is the author of the book The language of Regeneration in Colombia and Mexico. The manuscript reflects on literature and politics during the nineteenth century in both countries. She is also the author of several articles, chapter books and the children's book The sunflower that was stuck. Prior to joining SMU, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and also taught at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. María del Pilar has a background in philosophy and is interested in the connections between politics, literature and philosophy. She enjoys teaching literature, culture, and language courses as well as doing research on various topics related to the construction of subjectivity.

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Areas of Interest

• Latin American Literature
• Race relations and cultural practices in Latin American Literature
• Philosophy and Literature
• Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Studies
• Latin American Literature from the XIX century
• Latin American Literature from the XX-XXI century

Selected Publications and Presentations

• El lenguaje político de la regeneración en Colombia y México. Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2010.
• “Entre una poética y una política del deseo: canibalismo en la obra de Andrés Caicedo.” In La estela de Caicedo. Miradas críticas. Juan Duchesne Winter and Felipe Gómez Gutiérrez, eds. Serie Nueva América, Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2009. Pgs. 279-292.
• “A Poetic of Beauty: Nature, Memory and Resilience in El Botón de Nacar (2015).”  
• “Race and poetry: tracing a bridge between centuries. From Candelario Obeso to Linton Kwesi Johnson”.  Afro-Hispanic Review. 2013.
• “Elástico de sombra: Narratives of Machete Fencing in the Colombian Pacific. Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, “Movement(s)”. Knoxville, Tennessee, April 13-16, 2023.
• "Elástico de sombra: Narratives of Machete Fencing in the Colombian Pacific”. SNS Conference. Society for Novel Studies Biannual Conference 2023. The Novel and the Archive. University of Wisconsin, Madison. May 18-20 2023.
• “Soledad Acosta de Samper: The Affective Turn and Female Identity in the Nineteenth Century”. Pivot Points: Turns in Nineteenth-Century Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies. Special Session Latin American Literature. Modern Language Association, MLA. Washington D.C,. January 6-9 2022.
• “The role of nature in film: The Pearl Button, resilience and utopia”. Utopia, Dystopia and Climate Change: The 20th Conference of the Utopian Studies Society. Monash University. Prato, Italy, July 1-5, 2019.

Courses taught

• SPAN 2401
• SPAN 2302
• SPAN 3310
• SPAN 3313
• SPAN 3355
• WL 3373
• Courses in the Master in Liberal Studies and the Doctorate in Liberal Studies: Latin American Literature and Culture