María Isabel Mena was born in Quito, Ecuador in 1989. She has studied Andean History and Latin American Literature. She joined the University of Pittsburgh in 2018 as a PhD student in Hispanic Languages and Literatures. Previously, she worked as a lecturer at the Universidad de las Americas in Quito and as researcher and curator of the university museum of the Universidad Central del Ecuador (MUCE). The research proposal that she is developing compares current Ecuadorian female literature with the Ecuadorian literature of the so-called "Generación del 30". It focuses particularly on the approach to death, non-human subjects, and territory.
Degrees
- MA in Latin American Literature, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2016)
- MA in Andean History, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (2014)
- BA in Liberal Arts, Minor in Journalism, Universidad San Francisco de Quito (2011)
Awards
- Mention “José María Lequerica” by the City Hall of Quito for the book Jaime Andrade Moscoso. Escultura, murales y obra gráfica, 1935-1989 (2021) (editor and co-author)
- Scholarship to draw up the master's thesis: “La Baronesa de Wilson en Hispanoamérica: metáforas y un proyecto de modernidad para la mujer republicana”. ICALA (Fundation for the cultural exchange between Germany and Latin American) (2014)
Selected Publications
- “La baronesa de Wilson: la doble marginalidad de una viajera decimonónica española”, Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo: Revista del Grupo de Estudios del siglo XVIII, no. 27, Universidad de Cádiz, 2021, pp. 693-704.
- Editor and co-author of Jaime Andrade Moscoso. Escultura, murales y obra gráfica, 1935-1989, Universidad Central del Ecuador, 2020.
- “Prisión perpetua de Ricardo Piglia: experimentaciones, desdoblamiento y filiación literaria”, Hispamérica. revista de literatura, no. 147, 2020, pp. 13-19.
- “Los Sangurimas: La traducción del mundo del Matapalo”, LlJournal CUNY, 2017.
- La baronesa de Wilson y las metáforas sobre América y sus mujeres, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, 2015.