Marjorie Agosin

Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Spanish

Poet, human rights activist, literary critic. Interested in Jewish literature and literature of human rights in the Americas; women writers of Latin America; migration, identity, and ethnicity.

My creative work is inspired by the theme of social justice as well as the pursuit of remembrance and the memorialization of traumatic historical events both in the Americas and in Europe. I have written about the Holocaust through the portrayal of Anne Frank as well as about the history of Bosnian women during the siege of Sarajevo. I am also a literary scholar and my work has focused on such major writers such as Pablo Neruda, Maria Luisa Bombal and Gabriela Mistral. I have also researched and written about the role of women in Latin America during authoritarian regimes in the seventies and eighties. The work of the Chilean arpilleras has been a pioneer work on this subject. I have also written essays, autobiographical memoirs and a young adult novel. All of these works have as a unified theme the pursuit of social justice and human rights.

I teach a variety of courses from Writing 125 to a freshman seminar to courses on the subject of historical and public memory in the Americas. I also teach courses on Jewish women writers and on Latin America.

I like to garden, travel, and to compose stories.

Education

  • B.A., University of Georgia
  • M.A., Indiana University-Bloomington
  • Ph.D., Indiana University-Bloomington