Dr. Karen Muñoz-Christian

Chair, World Languages & Cultures Department

Professor of Spanish
Spanish Minor Advisor

Cal Poly Distinguished Teaching Award, 2015-2016

Areas of specialization

• Literatures & cultures of the Spanish Caribbean
• Latinx literatures and cultures; Afro-Latinx literature
• Race / Diaspora & migration / Memory studies / Trauma studies
• Service learning

Contact Information

• Office: Bldg. 47, Rm. 28C
• Email: kschrist@calpoly.edu

 

Education

• PhD Spanish, University of California, Irvine (1994)
• MA Spanish, Wichita State University (1985)
• BS Food Science, Iowa State University (1981)
   

Selected Publications

• “Repairing the Broken Strands of Afro-Latina History in Mayra Santos-Febres’ Fiction.” AfroLatinas and LatiNegras: Culture, Identity, and Struggle from an Intersectional Perspective (2022)
• “’Who and what are you?’: Tracing the Middle Passage in Afro-Latinx Writing.” Label Me Latina/o (Summer 2020)
• “Trauma in the Caribbean: Postmemory and the Persistence of History in Latinx Literature.” Studies in American Culture (Spring 2020)
•  “Weaving a Larger Web: Cuban American Writing in the Latin@ Narrative.” Latino Studies (Autumn 2017)
• “Beyond Essence: Performing Gender and Sexuality in Ena Lucía Portela’s Cien botellas en una pared.” International Journal of Cuban Studies (Summer 2013)
• Show and Tell: Identity as Performance in U.S. Latina/o Fiction (UNM Press, 1997)

 

Selected Presentations

• “Time Travel, Engrams, and Epigenetic Memory in Mayra Santos-Febres’ Fe en disfraz.” Latinx Visions: Speculative Worlds in Latinx Art, Literature, and Performance, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, March 9-11, 2023.

 

• “Repairing the Broken Strands of Afro-Latina History in Mayra Santos-Febres’ Fiction.” Centering Blackness, Challenging Latinidad. Latina/o Studies Association Conference, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, July 11-14, 2022.

 

• “A Wake/Awake: Tracing the Middle Passage in Afro-Latinx Writing.” Memory Studies Association 5^th Annual Conference, Warsaw, Poland (virtual), July 5-9, 2021.

 

• “Trauma in the Caribbean: Postmemory and the Persistence of History in Latinx Narrative.” Memory Studies Association 3^rd Annual Conference, Madrid, Spain, June 25-28, 2019.

 

• “’Broken Vessels and Ancient Light:’ Traumatic Postmemory and Latinx Crypto-Judaism in Days of Awe and Liturgies.” Transamerican Reticulations: Towards a Latinx Theory of Hemispheric Literatures. Fourth Biennial Latina/o Literary Theory and Criticism Conference, John Jay College-City University of New York, April 25-27, 2019.

 

• “When Science and Imagination Meet: Inherited Trauma in Latinx Fiction.” Latinx Studies Now: DC 2018+. Third Biennial Conference of the Latina/o Studies Association, Washington, DC, July 11-15, 2018.