Dr. Abraham Acosta is Associate Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. He came to the University of Arizona from the University of Michigan where he received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (2007). Prof. Acosta's areas of interest include contemporary Latin American narrative, critical hybridity, political narratology, subaltern studies, postcolonial theory, and critical theory. His book, Thresholds of Illiteracy: Theory, Latin America, and the Crisis of Resistance, is published by Fordham University Press.
Publications since 2001
Books:
2014. Thresholds of Illiteracy: Theory, Latin America, and the Crisis of Resistance. Just ideas (Transformative Ideals of Justice in Ethical and Political Thought), edited by Drucilla Cornell and Roger Berkowitz. New York: Fordham University Press. http://fordhampress.com/index.php/threshods-of-iiteracy-paperback.html
Chapters in Scholarly Books:
2018. “Crisis and Migration in Posthegemonic Times: Primitive Accumulation and Labor in La Bestia.” Dialectical Imaginaries: Materialist Approaches to U.S. Latino/a Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism.Marcial Gonzalez and Carlos Gallego editors. University of Michigan Press. Pages 241-262.
2018. “The Posthegemonic Turn.” New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power. Juan Poblete, editor. New York; London: Routledge. Pages 255-271.
2016. "Illiteracy in Latin America." The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Ray, Sangeeta, Henry Schwarz, José Luis Villacañas Berlanga, Alberto Moreiras and April Shemak (eds). Blackwell Publishing.
2013. “Sign-Cutting: Thresholds, Borders, and Others in the Devil’s Highway”. The Shade of the Saguaro/La sombra del saguaro. Gaetano Prampolini and Annamaria Pinazzi (eds). Firenze: Firenze University Press.
Articles:
2018. Introduction to Special Issue, "Unsettling Coloniality: Readings and Interrogations". Edited by Abraham Acosta. Journal of Commonwealth and Postscolonial Studies. 6.1: 3-16.
2016. "Of Failed Retreats: Postcolonial Theory and Post-Testimonial Narrative in Central American Writing." Política Común 9. http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/pc.12322227.0009.008
2014. "The Wager of Critical Multilingualism Studies." Critical Multilingualism Studies 2.1: 20-37. http://cms.arizona.edu/index.php/multilingual/article/view/42/96
2013. "Orality and Politics in Latin America: Thresholds of Illiteracy." CR: The New Centennial Review 13 (2): 203-222. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_centennial_review/v013/13.2.acosta.html
2012. "Hinging on Exclusion and Exception: Bare Life, the US/Mexico Border, and 'Los que nunca llegarán'". Social Text 30 (4 113): 103-23. http://socialtext.dukejournals.org/content/30/4_113/103.full.pdf+html
2010. "Contingencies of Silence: Subalternity, the EZLN, and the Accounting of Speech in Latin America". Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 19:2: 203-223. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13569325.2010.494936
2005. "At the Margins of History, the Nation-State and Literature: the Discourse of Comparative Literature and Latin American Subaltern Studies". Dispositio/n: American Journal of Cultural Histories and Theories 25.52: 249-264. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41491798
Book Reviews:
2013. “Lund, Joshua. The Mestizo State: Reading Race in Modern Mexico”. The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History 70 (1): 117-118. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tam/summary/v070/70.1.acosta.html
2013. “Beverley, John. Latinamericanism After 9/11.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 16: 343-344. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/arizona_journal_of_hispanic_cultural_studi…
2011. “Legras, Horacio. Literature and Subjection: The Economy of Writing and Marginality in Latin America”. Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature 35 (1): 166-168.
Awards
2010-11 Woodrow Wilson/Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship