I specialize in contemporary Latin American literatures and cultures, with a focus on Mexican narrative. I teach a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses ranging from general surveys of Spanish American literature and cultural trends to specialized courses on contemporary Mexican cultural topics, ecocriticism, and disaster studies. Most of my research focuses on the cultural processes of modernity in Latin America, touching on topics ranging from encyclopedic fiction to disaster literature, migration, and cultural mediations of the environment. I have published work in the Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Latin American Research Review, Moving Worlds, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and Symposium, among other venues. My first book, Disaster Writing: The Cultural Politics of Catastrophe in Latin America, appeared in the University of Virginia Press in 2011 and my latest, The Rights of Nature and the Testimony of Things: Literature and Environmental Ethics from Latin America, is coming out with the Vanderbilt University Press in 2024. I also co-edited a volume on Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America together with Brazilian professor Zélia Bora and a special issue of Ecozon@ on Southern Atlantic ecocriticism with Luis Iñaki García-Prádanos.
Research
Mexican Narrative, Disaster Studies, Latin American Ecocriticism, the Total Novel
Other Relevant Information
Mark specializes in contemporary Latin American literatures and cultures, with a focus on Mexican narrative. He teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses ranging from general surveys of Spanish American literature and cultural trends to specialized courses on contemporary Mexican cultural topics, ecocriticism, and disaster studies.
