The Department of American Studies

Department Faculty

Ramón Soto-Crespo
Associate Professor of American Studies

Director of Latino/a Studies Program
Office: 933 Clemens Hall
Phone: (716) 645-0876
Email: rs55@buffalo.edu

Fall 2009: On Leave

Education

  • PhD in Comparative Literature from Purdue University, 1996

Areas of Specialization

  • Latina/o studies, Caribbean and Latin American literature, Continental philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Queer studies

Publications

  • Mainland Passage: The Cultural Anomaly of Puerto Rico. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
  • "An Intractable Foundation: Luis Muñoz Marín and the Borderland State in Contemporary Puerto Rican Literature," American Literary History 18:4 (2006): 712-38.
  • "Death and the Diaspora Writer: Hybridity and Mourning in the Work of Jamaica Kincaid," Contemporary Literature 43:2 (2002): 342-76.
  • "'The Pains of Memory': Mourning the Nation in Puerto Rican Art and Literature," MLN 117:2 (2002): 449-80.
  • "Heterosexuality Terminable or Interminable? Kleinian Fantasies of Reparation and Mourning," Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis, ed. Tim Dean and Christopher Lane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001: 190-209.
  • "'Scars of Separation': Psychoanalysis, Marxism, and the Praxis of Loss," Textual Practice 14:3 (2000): 1-18.

Current Research Projects

  • Primitive Futures: Sexual Variance, Cultural Landscapes, and Latino American Writing. Manuscript on contemporary Latino and Latin American narratives of masculine sexual difference. It examines bugarrón sexuality in anthropological, sociological, cultural studies, film, and literary works, focusing on the writings of Jacobo Schifter, Jamaica Kincaid, Patricia Powell, Michael Nava, and Reinaldo Arenas.

Frequently Taught Courses

  • I offer regular courses on Latina/o and Caribbean literature and culture, Latin American literature, queer, cultural, and psychoanalytic theory.