I began my career focusing on the work of Gabriel García Márquez, in whom I remain very interested; my dissertation focused on the connections between his journalistic career and his early fiction.  My subsequent research focused on women writers, in particular Chilean novelist Isabel Allende.  An increasing interest in spatial studies and the contributions of feminist geography to literary criticism led to my book on space and place in the work of Allende, Laura Restrepo (Colombia), Rosario Ferré (Puerto Rico), Sara Sefchovich (Mexico), and Angeles Mastretta (Mexico).  Current research focuses on the insights that masculinity studies lend to the reading of Latino/a fiction, including authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Oscar Hijuelos, and Roberto Fernández, among others.

Areas of Specialty

• Spanish American novel, 20^th-21^st centuries
• Spatial representations in literary texts
• Gender studies, feminist studies, masculinity studies
• Latina/o fiction

• Contemporary Spanish American Novels by Women: Mapping the Narrative. Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2007.
• Modernisms and Modernities: Studies in Honor of Donald L. Shaw. Ed. Susan Carvalho. Newark DE: Juan de la Cuesta Monographs, 2006.