Karen Muñoz-Christian

Professor of Spanish 
Spanish Minor Advisor 

Cal Poly Distinguished Teaching Award, 2015-2016 

Education

• Ph.D., University of California at Irvine (1994)
• M.A., Wichita State University (1985)
• B.S., Iowa State University (1981)

Selected Publications 

• “Time Travel as Recuperation of Slave Histories in Mayra Santos-Febres’ Fe en disfraz.” In Latinx Visions: Speculative Worlds in Latinx Literature, Art, & Performance (forthcoming). 

• “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 

• “’I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore:’ Latinx murals in the Midwest.” Latina/x/o Studies Association Conference. Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, April 17-20, 2024. 

• “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 5th 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 3rd 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.