Marjorie Agosin

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

Contact
Phone:
+1 (781) 283-2425
Username:
magosin
Department
Spanish and Portuguese
Jewish Studies
Latin American Studies

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
  • Ph.D., Indiana University

Currently teaching

Seminar: Latin American Women Writers: Identity, Marginality, and the Literary Canon

SPAN327

An examination of twentieth-century women writers from Latin America. Perspectives for analyses will include questions of identity (national, ethnic/racial, religious, sexual, gender), the extent to which Afro-Hispanic, Indigenous, and non-Christian writers constitute distinct, marginalized groups in Latin American literature, and a comparison of issues regarding identity in selected canonical and noncanonical works by Gabriela Mistral, Remedios Varo, Elena Poniatowska, Nancy Morejón, Rosario Aguilar, Gioconda Belli, and Victoria Ocampo.

More Info

  • The Jewish Women Writers of Latin America

    SPAN277

    This course will explore the vibrant literary culture of Jewish women writers of Latin America from the 1920s to the present. We will examine selected works by these authors, daughters of immigrants, whose various literary genres reveal the struggle with issues of identity, acculturation, and diasporic imagination. Writers include Alicia Steimberg of Argentina, Clarice Lispector of Brazil, and Margo Glantz of Mexico, as well as a new generation of writers who explore issues of multiculturalism and ethnicity. This course is taught in Spanish. (JWST 277 and SPAN 277 are cross-listed courses.)

  • The Jewish Women Writers of Latin America

    SPAN377

    This course will explore the vibrant literary culture of Jewish women writers of Latin America from the 1920s to the present. We will examine selected works by these authors, daughters of immigrants, whose various literary genres reveal the struggle with issues of identity, acculturation, and diasporic imagination. Writers include Alicia Steimberg of Argentina, Clarice Lispector of Brazil, and Margo Glantz of Mexico, as well as a new generation of writers who explore issues of multiculturalism and ethnicity.Students in JWST 227/SPAN 277 and JWST 377/SPAN 377 will all get the same material, but students taking the 300-level version of the course will have additional assignments, including formal presentations and longer writing and independent work.. This course is taught in Spanish. (JWST 377 and SPAN 377 are cross-listed courses.)