Alfred J. López
Professor and Department Head
// English
Faculty
Professor
// Cornerstone
Faculty
Professor
// Comparative Literature // SLC
Faculty
Affiliated Faculty // American Studies // SIS
Mellon Foundation Provost's Fellow for Academic Leadership, 2024-2025 // English
Office and Contact
Global South & postcolonial studies
Cuban & Cuban-American studies
Latin American & Caribbean studies
Selected Publications
Books:
Posts and Pasts: A Theory of Postcolonialism. State University of New York Press, 2001.
Ed. & intro: Postcolonial Whiteness: A Critical Reader on Race and Empire. State University of New York Press, 2005.
José Martí and the Future of Cuban Nationalism. University Press of Florida, 2006.
José Martí: A Revolutionary Life. University of Texas Press (Trade), 2014.
A Posthumous History of José Martí: The Apostle and his Afterlife. Routledge, 2022.
The Routledge Companion to Literature and the Global South. Ed. & intro. with Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo. Routledge, 2023.
Selected Articles & Translation:
“La patria y el tirano: José Martí and the Role of Literature in the Formation of Cuban Nationalisms.” Cuban Studies 33 (2003).
“Dressing for Success in the New Global U. S. South; Or, the Rediscovery of the New World.” American Literature 78.4 (Fall 2006). Special Issue: “Global Contexts, Local Literatures: The New Southern Studies.” Guest Editors: Kathryn McKee and Annette Trefzer.
“Hugo Meltzl and That Dangerous American Supplement; or, A Tale of Two 1877s.” Comparative Literature 61:3 (Summer 2009). Special Issue: “The Americas, Otherwise.” Guest Editors: Lois Parkinson Zamora and Silvia D. Spitta.
“The Repeating Plantation: Images of 'the South' in the Postcolonial World.” Comparative Literature 63.4 (Fall 2011).
“Occupying Reality: Fanon Reading Hegel.” South Atlantic Quarterly 112.1 (2013). Special Issue: “Fanon: Imperative of the Now.” Guest Editor: Grant Farred.
“Myth, Martyrdom, and the Many Deaths of José Martí.” Cuban Studies 44 (2016).
Translation of José Martí. “Nuestra América” [“Our America”]. Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ninth ed. Vol. 2: 1865 to the Present. 2016.
“Contesting the Material Turn; or, The Persistence of Agency.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 5.3 (September 2018). Special Issue: Animating Theories of the Material: Approaching Animist Being in Postcolonial Literatures. Guest Editor: Rosemary Jolly & Alex Fyfe.
“Scenes from the Global South: Women’s Bodies as Waste in Bolaño’s 2666.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 7.1 (January 2020).
“Intentions, Methods, and the Future of Global South Studies.” Comparative Literature Studies 58.1/2 (2021).
Journalism:
2015-2016: Ten blog posts as correspondent for the Huffington Post. See Individual posts at https://www.huffpost.com/author/alfred-j-lapez.
Journals:
Founding Editor, The Global South, published by Indiana University Press. General Editor for Volumes 1 and 2 (2007-2008).
Guest Editor (with David Chioni Moore and Robert Marzec), Modern Fiction Studies 56.4 (Winter 2010). Special Issue: “Postcolonial Literature, Twenty-Five Years Later.”
Guest Editor (with Grant Farred), Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 25.1 (2017). Special Issue: “Dwelling in a Global Age.”
Selected Awards & Fellowships:
January 2016: Center for Research on Diversity and Inclusion, Purdue University. Excellence in Research Award.
2018: Outstanding Faculty Member, Latino Cultural Center, Purdue University.
2020: School of Interdisciplinary Studies Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University.
Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award, Department of English, Purdue University. 2021.
May-June 2003: Rockefeller Foundation. Resident Fellowship at Bellagio Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy.