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Amanda M. Smith
  • Pronouns she, her, her, hers, herself
  • Title
    • Associate Professor
    • Faculty Director of Undergraduate Honors Programs
  • Division Humanities Division
  • Department
    • Literature Department
  • Affiliations Spanish Studies, Latin American & Latino Studies, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, College Scholars Program
  • Phone
    831-459-2704 (Office)
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Humanities Building 1, 333
  • Office Hours Winter 2023: Email for sign-up link
  • Mail Stop Humanities Academic Services
  • Courses LIT 80Q: Jane the Virgin; LIT 124B: Contemporary Latin American Short Story; LIT 160F: Mapping Fictions: Geocritical Approaches to Cultural Studies; LIT 167I: The Environmental Humanities: Latin American Perspectives; LIT 188R: Las humanidades ambientales: perspectivas latinoamericanas; LIT 189B: El siglo XIX en América Latinas: cultura, política y sociedad; LIT 189I: Literatura e indigeneidad; LIT 288Z/231A: 20th- and 21st-century Latin American Commodity Narratives; LIT 288Y: Indigeneidad contemporánea en América Latina; LIT 251/288Y: The Environmental Humanities: Latin American Perspectives

Summary of Expertise

20th- & 21st-century Latin American and Latinx literatures and cultures, Indigenous studies, Amazonia, Environmental humanities, Spatial Humanities, Sound Studies, Comics, Archival Preservation

For prospective graduate students: The UCSC Literature Department is unique in that it brings together faculty members who at most other US institutions would work in different departments. What this means for our graduate program is that students can design bold and imaginative projects that build on diverse areas of expertise. We are particularly strong in Latin American literary and cultural studies, with faculty members Juan Poblete, Zac Zimmer, and myself; as well as hemispheric Americanists such as Kirsten Silva-Gruesz and Susan Gillman; and a close relationship to the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies. I am currently accepting students working in contemporary Latin American literature and cultures, especially those interested in the Environmental Humanities and Sound Studies.

Research Interests

Professor Smith's research explores relationships among space, ecology, decoloniality, and development in Latin American and Latinx cultures. Her book, Mapping the Amazon: Literary Geography after the Rubber Boom (Liverpool University Press, 2021), examines how stories told about the Amazon in canonical twentieth-century novels have shaped the way people across the globe understand and use the region. Her next book project, The Nature of Conflict, examines, through contemporary art, culture, and politics, the complexities of considering nature as a juridical victim with rights in the wake of Colombia's armed conflict. Smith is co-founder of the Latin American Sound Studies Working Group with Tamara Mitchell and is working with Mitchell on a special issue on Latin American literary sound studies for the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. Professor Smith's work has appeared in The Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies; The Journal of West Indian Literatures; ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America; A contracorriente; Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures; and Ciberletras. She also co-edited the provocative graphic novel, United States of Banana.

 

 

Biography, Education and Training

PhD, The Johns Hopkins University

MA, Michigan State University

BA, Michigan State University

 

Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Quechua

Honors, Awards and Grants

Selected Publications

Please see Google Scholar for a complete list of publications.

Selected Presentations

  • "La digitalización de las bibliotecas," Feria Internacional del Libro de Iquitos, Loreto, Peru, May 21, 2022.
  • "Queering Lima’s Urban Ecology in Islas (2010) by Rodrigo La Hoz," XXXX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, May 5-8, 2022.
  • "Extractivism in Iquitos: From the Rubber Boom to Ayahuasca Literature." SPAN 535 Environment and Extractivism in Latin American Culture, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, December 1, 2021.
  • "La vorágine 100 años después." Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad de Caldas, Colombia, November 19, 2021.
  • "Imagining Amazonia Cartographically," Amazon Lab, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Duke University, November 17, 2021.
  • "A Book and Dissertation Writing Workshop," Amazon Lab, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Duke University, November 17, 2021.
  • "Sounds Like New Values: Decoloniality and Sonic Unintelligibility in United States of Banana: A Graphic Novel (2021) by Giannina Braschi and Joakim Lindengren," XXXIX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, May 26-29, 2021.
  • "Cartografías literarias amazónicas," Coloquio de Spanish Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, May 24, 2021.
  • "Queer Ecology in Islas by Rodrigo la Hoz," SPAN 550 - Porn Lit: Critical Approaches to Erotic Literature in Latin America and Spain, Department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, University of British Columbia, March 12, 2021.

Selected Recordings