Biographical Notes

Evelyn Soto’s research and teaching works across the fields of Latina/o/x literary and cultural studies, hemispheric literary studies, and transnational histories of race. She is currently at work on a first book manuscript titled Tainted Translations: Early Latinx Political Imaginaries and Trans-American Empire. This project situates Latinx political pasts within a new literary and cultural geography: of densely interconnected revolutionary movements across the Caribbean, continental South America, and US during and beyond the historical uprisings of 1808-1826. By close reading an interdisciplinary and multilingual range of literary, legal, and historical texts, the book assembles an archive of early Latinx political imaginaries that contest enduring narratives of US exceptionalism and myths of “mixed” racial democracy in Latin American nationalisms.

Professor Soto’s research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Sciences Research Council, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, among others. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Latinx Literature in Transition, Latina Histories and Cultures: Feminist Readings and Recoveries of Archival Knowledge, and Early American Literature.