ELIZABETH MONASTERIOS

PhD, University of Toronto
Associate Professor of Latin American Literature

Room 1309F, Cathedral of Learning
412-624-2709
elm15@pitt.edu

Focus: Andean literatures and culture, Latin American poetry, postcolonial theory

Born in La Paz, Bolivia, Elizabeth Monasterios received her "Licenciatura en Literatura" from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, and obtained her PhD from the University of Toronto in 1992, where the study of philosophy and poetry broadened her earliest training in Latin American and Andean literatures. For the last eleven years she has taught at SUNY Stony Brook, where she was director of undergraduate studies. She also holds visiting professorships at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar. In September 2002 she joined the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches Andean epistemology and Latin American poetry.

From the outset of her career, Monasterios understood literary creation as something to be aesthetically explicated but also to be set in social and historical perspective. Her research develops these notions and addresses the field of Laitn American cultural theories with a strong emphasis on Andean literatures and poetic discourse. Currently, she is developing a theorization of Andean epistemology in order to articulate critical strategies that are able to read Latin American cultural productions from other perspectives than those rooted in European or North American criticism. In so doing, she expects to create a productive dialogue between hegemonic critical discourses and those cultivated in cultural contexts usually neglected by leading theoreticians.

Monasterios has published numerous articles relating these issues. She has also edited two books on Latin American literature and authored Dilemas de las poesia de fin de siglo: José Emilio Pacheco y Jaime Sáenz. Recently, she has served as a co-ordinator and contributor for the Comparative History of Latin American Literature, edited by Mario J. Valdes, and to be published by the University of Oxford Press. Monasterios also chairs the Race and Ethnicity Track Committee for LASA 2003, serves as contributor-editor for the Handbook of Latin American Studies, and is a member of the executive committee of JALLA (Jornadas Andinas de Literatura Latinoamericana).