Emilio Bejel

Education and Degree(s)

• Ph.D., Florida State University

Profile

EMILIO BEJEL, poet, critic, and narrator, was born in Manzanillo, Cuba, and has lived in the United States since the 1960s. He received his B.A. from the University of Miami, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish and Spanish American literature from Florida State University (Tallahassee). In 1997 he was a member of the jury for the Casa de las Américas Literary Prize. He has published several books of literary and cultural criticism, among them Literatura de Nuestra América, La subversión de la semiótica, José Lezama Lima, Poet of the Image, Gay Cuban Nation, and José Martí: Images of Memory and Mourning; as well as several poetry collections, the latest two of them are Casas deshabitadas and El libro regalado. He has also published three versions of an autobiographical narrative: The Write Way Home. A Cuban-American Story (translated into English by Professor Stephen Clark), El horizonte de mi piel (in Spanish), and O Horizonte da Minha Pele (in Portuguese). At the present time he is distinguished professor of Latin American Studies of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California at Davis, where he chaired that department from 2003 to 2008.

Research Interest(s)

• Spanish-American literature and culture
• Critical theory
• Lezama Lima
• Martí
• Arenas

Course(s) Taught

• Spanish 100: Principles of Hispanic Literature and Criticism
• Spanish 157: 20th Century Masters in Spanish American Literature
• Spanish 201: Critical Theory
• Spanish 274: Gender Transgressions in Latin American Culture

Current Projects

Current Interest: José Martí's iconicity within the Cuban national narrative; the relationship between autobiography, confession, and psychoanalysis in Latin American literature and culture; Queer issues.