Carlos Mejia SuarezFaculty

"Digo esto para que los jóvenes insistan en lo que no comprenden, que vuelvan sobre lo que no entienden, porque al final los ojos se abrirán ante un mundo maravilloso" ["I say this so that young people insist in what they don't comprehend, so that they go over what they don't understand, for at the end their eyes will be open before a wonderful world." [José Lezama Lima. Paradiso]

As a scholar in Latin American literature and culture, and in literary studies, I have always followed these words that Cuban novelist José Lezama Lima uses to begin his novel… And even before I had read his work, I constantly faced what I could not understand with a spirit of curiosity and a desire to make sense of what unfolded before my eyes: years of violence, the heat of my hometown and the cool heights of the Andes where Bogotá sits… the words of the masters, the images on huge screens… reading Der Zauberberg and seeing myself in it as much as I could relate to Cien años de soledad. I wondered how dinosaurs could ever appear before my eyes in the big screen, and how someone could prompt the images in the news that showed the devastation of bombs, or rockets lighting the sky. Literature was the path that my curiosity took in order to find answers. I am equally passionate about communicating to others this desire to understand what is not clear at first glance.

I recently published Escrituras de lo diabólico. Retos de la alteridad en la literatura latinoamericana moderna y posmoderna. My research currently focuses on  Colombian contemporary narratives of violence and conflict, and representations of masculinities in Latin American literature (mainly focusing on Salvador Novo, Alonso Sánchez Baute, Fernando Molano Vargas, Tomás González, and Héctor Abad Faciolince). I also have published three short stories in different journals and sites from Latin America.

Click here to visit my website.

If you want to schedule a meeting to talk about LALACS, GWSS or the Spanish major and minor programs, feel free to schedule an appointment with me by clicking here to go to my google calendar.

Courses Taught