kaitlinmmurphy

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kaitlinmmurphy@arizona.edu
Murphy, Mary Kaitlin M.
Associate Professor

I am an Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory at the University of Arizona and affiliate faculty in the School of Art, the Human Rights Practice Program, and Latin American Studies. I research and teach on hemispheric American studies, performance studies, visual culture, decolonial theory, culture and politics, human rights, and memory studies.

My first book, Mapping Memory: Visuality, Affect, and Embodied Politics in the Americas (Fordham UP), interweaves visual and performance theory with memory and affect studies to theorize memory mapping as a visual and spatial strategy that has emerged in opposition to political discourses and visual economies that overlook certain subjects and human rights abuses. I am co-editor of the recently-published Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism, which is the first systematic effort to map the fast-growing phenomenon of memory activism and to delineate a new field of research that lies at the intersection of memory and social movement studies. My writing can be found in Memory Studies, Genocide Studies and PreventionTDR: The Drama ReviewJournal of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Journal of Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, Human Rights Review, in various anthologies, and elsewhere. I am currently at work on two book-length projects, the first of which is tentatively titled Future Histories: Memory, Violence, and Decolonial Reimaginings.

In addition to my academic work, I work as a consultant in both English and Spanish in a range of areas, including memory, civil and human rights, transitional justice and community-based reconciliation and post-conflict reconstruction. I am a Fulbright Specialist with the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and World Learning and welcome project discussions related to my areas of expertise.

Education
Ph.D., New York University, 2013
M.A., New York University, 2009
B.A., University of California Santa Cruz, 2002

Public Leadership Executive Education Program, Harvard University, 2022

Research, Teaching, and Advising Areas
Social, cultural, and critical theory, including visual and performance studies, decolonial theory, hemispheric American studies, memory, and human rights.

Courses Taught (Sample List)
Graduate
Introduction to Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory
The Politics and the Senses: Debates in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory
Visual Culture, Performance, and Political Life
Decolonial Theory, Thinking, and Practices
Introduction to Memory Studies 
Contemporary Debates in Memory Studies

Human Rights and the Arts

Undergraduate
Introduction to Literary Analysis
Young Adult Fiction
Major Works in Latin American Literature
Art and Politics
Theater and Performance of the Hemispheric Americas
Issues in Latin American Society and Popular Culture
Human Rights and Documentary Film
Memory and the Politics of Place in the Americas

Human Rights and Resistance in the Americas
Arts, Resistance, and Memory Wars

 

Currently Teaching

SPAN 541 – Topics in Spanish-American Nineteenth, Twentieth & Twenty-First Cent. Literature

Representative topics include: nineteenth-century Hispanic-American prose fiction; modernismo; modern Hispanic-American prose fiction; modern Hispanic-American poetry; contemporary Hispanic-American prose fiction; contemporary Hispanic-American poetry; modern and contemporary Hispanic-American theater; trends in the Hispanic-American short story.