Cara Kinnally
Promoted to Associate Professor
School of Languages and Cultures
ckinnall@purdue.edu
Cara Kinnally has a combined Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures and American Studies and an M.A. in Literatures in Spanish from Indiana Universty, as well as a B.A. in Spanish and English from Augustana College. She studies the hidden and lost histories of Hispanic communities.
Her book, Forgotten Futures, Colonized Pasts: Transnational Collaboration in Nineteenth-Century Greater Mexico (Bucknell University Press, 2019), examines how 19th-Century writers from Greater Mexico described how elite Mexicans and Mexican-Americans defined themselves and their relationship with Spain, Mexico, the United States, and Anglo-America in the 19th Century.
Dr. Kinnally specializes in 19th- and 20th-Century Mexican and Mexican-American literature, Latino/a studies and literature, border studies, empire studies and (post)-colonial theory, and critical race theory. She is interested in recovering lost Hispanic histories from the 19th Century because conversations about Hispanic identities and racism were more open then. She also feels they are relevant to relevant to issues that Hispanic communities face within the U.S. today.