Photo of María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo

María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo

Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis

Education

  • 1993 Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University
  • 1983 B.A. in English Literature, Yale University

Areas of Research/Interest

Latin American and Latinx Studies; Indigenous Studies; colonization and comparative race in the Americas; globalization and immigrations studies; development studies and revolutionary thought; hemispheric literary and cultural studies.

External Affiliations

Latin America Studies Association; American Studies Association; Modern Language Association; Tepoztlán Institute for Transnational History of the Americas

Fellowships/Honors

  • 2019 Casa de Las Americas Literary Prize for the Best Book in Studies of Latinos in the United States
  • 2017 John Hope Franklin Prize for Best Book in American Studies. American Studies Association (ASA).
  • 2017 Best Book Award for Book Published in 2016. National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies (NACCS).
  • 2017 Finalist, IPEG Book Prize. British International Studies Association- International Political Economy Group. May.
  • 2011 The Hispanic History of Texas Project, Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project Research Grant
  • 2010-2011 U.S. Fulbright-García Robles Research Fellowship, All Disciplines Mexico City

Saldaña-Portillo has also received various grants and awards over the course of her career from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University of California.

Publications

  • Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States.
    Duke University Press, 2016.
  • Des/posesión: Género, territorio y luchas por la autodeterminación
    PUEG-UNAM, 2014.
  • Aunt Lute’s Anthology of U.S. Women’s Writing, Volume II
    Aunt Lute Press, 2008.
  • The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development.
    Duke University Press, 2003.

SELECTED ARTICLES

"The Violence of Citizenship in the Making of Refugees: The U.S. and Central America." Social Text, 37.4 (2019): 141.

"Critical Latinx Indigeneities: A Paradigm Drift." Latino Studies, Online First (2017).

"Cruel Coloniality, or the Ruse of Sovereignty." PMLA, 131.3 (2016): 722-730.

"Hemispheric Literature: Are We There Yet?" In The Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature, Yogita Goyal, ed. Cambridge University Press (2017): 203-220.

"Latina Literature in the U.S.: The View from Here." In The Cambridge History of Latin American Women's Literature, Ileana Rodríguez and Mónica Szurmuk, eds. Cambridge University Press (2017): 341-363.

"Indigenismo as Nationalism, From the Liberal to the Revolutionary Era." In Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought: Historical and Institutional Trajectories, Marisa Belausteguigoitia, Yolanda Martínez San-Miguel and Benjamin Sinfuentes Jariategui, eds. Palgrave (2015): 37-44.

"Indigenous but not Indian? Chicana/os and the Politics of Indigeneity," co-authored with Maria Cotera. The World of Indigenous North American, Robert Warrior, ed. Routledge Press. (2014): 549-568.

"La plaza como practica citacional." Debate Feminista, Vol. 46, octubre (2012): 13-28.

"'No Country for Old Mexicans': The Collision of Empires on the Texas Frontier." Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 13.1 (2011): 67-84.  

"In the Shadow of NAFTA: Y tu mamá también Revisits the National Allegory of Mexican Sovereignty," American Quarterly, 57.3 (2005): 751-778.

"'Wavering on the Horizon of Social Being:' The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo and Its Racial Character in Ámerico Paredes' George Washington Gómez," Radical History Review, 89 (2004): 135-161.

"On the Road With Che Guevara and Jack Kerouac: Melancholia and Colonial Geographies of Race in the Americas," New Formations, 47 (2002): 87-108.