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Suzanne Bost

Professor & Department Chair

Professor, Chair of the English Department, Affiliate in Women's Studies and Gender Studies

My work focuses on the intersections of Women’s and Gender Studies, Latinx Studies, and Ethnic Studies with literature.  Building from my cross-cultural and interdisciplinary training, I have published numerous essays on Latinx literature, feminist theory, disability studies, posthumanism, and popular culture, with a particular focus on ethics and futurity.  I’ve also been writing quite a bit about the Gloria Anzaldúa archives and the weird research processes that emerge from my work there.  In the past five years, my writing and my teaching have become increasingly experimental, moving away from traditional literary arguments and towards more speculative, embodied, and cross-genre practices.  My newest book focuses on ethical alternatives to liberal humanism – queer ecologies, webs of relation, and trans-species lifeforms – in the works of John Rechy, Aurora Levins Morales, and Gloria Anzaldúa. 

Transformative education is the most important thing I do, and I truly enjoy learning with and from my students.

Education

  • BA, University of Texas at Austin
  • MA & PhD, Vanderbilt University

Research Interests

  • American Literatures, 1850 – Present
  • Latinx Literature
  • African American Literature
  • Feminist Theory
  • Women of Color Feminisms
  • Literary Theory
  • Posthumanism
  • Gender and Illness
  • Methodologies and Pedagogies

Publications/Research Listings

Books:

  • Shared Selves: Latinx Memoir and Ethical Alternatives to Humanism  (University of Illinois Press, September 2019)
  • The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature, co-edited with Frances Aparicio (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, September 2012)
  • Encarnación: Illness and Body Politics in Chicana Feminist Literature (Fordham University Press, December 2009), 2010 winner of the National Women’s Studies Association’s Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize
  • Mulattas and Mestizas: Representing Mixed Identities in the Americas, 1850-2000 (The University of Georgia Press, January 2003; re-released in paperback, Fall 2005)

Articles and Book Chapters:

  • “Irrational Bodies, Emerging Beings: Disability and Decoloniality in Anzaldúan Thought.”  Disability and the Global South 6.1 (2019): 1562-1580. 
  • “Identity and Cross-Cultural Empathy: Writing to Sister Mary Agnes Curran, O.S.F.”  Feminist Formations 29.2 (Summer 2017): 177-199. 
  • “Corporeal Connections and Healing Justice in the Work of Aurora Levins Morales: An Interview.”  MELUS 42.1 (2017): 186-203.
  • “Practicing Yoga / Embodying Feminism / Shape-Shifting.”  Frontiers: Journal of Women’s Studies 37.2 (Summer 2016): 191-210.         
  • “Messy Archives and Materials that Matter: Making Knowledge with the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Papers.” PMLA (May 2015): 615-30.
  • “Pain: Coyolxauhqui, Yoga, and Social Permeability.”  Re-Thinking Therapeutic Culture.  Eds. Timothy Aubry and Trysh Travis.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.  175-186.
  • “The Queer Debt Crisis.”  Co-authored with Pamela Caughie, Alanna Beroiza, Judith Roof, Dennis Allen, Madelyn Detloff, and Carina Pasaquesi.  Midwest Modern Language Association 46.2- 47.1 (Fall 2013 – Spring 2014): 93-140.
  • “Diabetes, Culture, and Food: Posthumanist Nutrition in the Gloria Anzaldúa Archive.”  Postnational Appetites: Rethinking Chicana/o Literature Through Food.  Eds. Meredith Abarca and Nieves Pascual.  New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013. 27-43.
  • “Illness and Healing in Latino/a Literature.”  The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature.  Eds. Suzanne Bost and Frances Aparicio.  London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2012.  84-94.
  • “Ex-centric Subjects: Motherhood and/as Disability in Nancy Mairs and Cherríe Moraga.”  Disability and Mothering.  Eds. Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Jan Cellio.  Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2011. 
  • “Hurting to Change the World: My Grandmother, Faith, and Gloria Anzaldúa.”  Bridging: How and Why Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa’s Life and Work Transformed Our Own.  Eds. Gloria González-López and AnaLouise Keating.  Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.  191-6.
  • “Caminando con Gloria: Walking as Experience, Thought, and Action.”  El Mundo Zurdo.  Eds. Norma Cantú, et al.  San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 2010.  217-27.
  • “Team-Teaching Transnationalism: Comparison and Difference in the Americas.”  Co-authored with Elizabeth Russ.  Brújula 7 (Spring 2009): 146-9.  
  • “From Race/Sex/Etc. to Glucose, Feeding Tube, and Mourning: The Shifting Matter of Chicana Feminism.”  Material Feminisms.  Eds. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.   340-72.
  • “Gloria Anzaldúa's Mestiza Pain: Mexican Sacrifice, Chicana Embodiment, and Feminist Politics.”  Aztlán 30.2 (Fall 2005): 5-31.
  • “Dissolving and Solidifying Identities: Crossing Race, Sex, and Politics in Mestiza Erotics.”  Eros.USA: Essays on the Culture and Literature of Desire.  Eds. Cheryl Malcolm and Jopi Nyman.  Gdansk, Poland: Gdansk UP, 2005.  187-205.
  • “West Meets East: 19th-Century Southern Dialogues on Race, Gender, Nation, and Mixture.”  Mississippi Quarterly 56.4 (Fall 2003): 647-656.
  • “Women and Chile at the Alamo: Feeding U.S. Nationalist Mythology.”  Nepantla: Views from South  4.3 (November 2003): 493-522.     
  • “’Be deceived if ya wanna be foolish’: (Re)constructing Body, Genre, and Gender in Feminist Rap.”  Postmodern Culture 12.1 (September 2001).
  • “Transgressing Borders: Puerto Rican and Latina Mestizaje.”  MELUS 25.2 (Summer 2000): 187-211. 
  • “Fluidity without Postmodernism: Michelle Cliff and the Tragic Mulatta Tradition.” African American Review 32 (Winter 1998): 673-689.