María Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles

Dr. María Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of the Americas Initiative at Florida Atlantic University's Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature (LLCL). She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Latin American Literature from Washington University in St. Louis, with a graduate certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies (2011). Her research focuses on 19th-century Latin American, Caribbean, and Brazilian literature, Gender Studies, and Afro-Latin American Diaspora Studies. She has been honored with prestigious awards including the 2017 Ibero-American Prize (LASA) and Harold Eugene Davis Prize (MACLAS) for her work on Afro-Cuban poet Cristina Ayala, the 2020 Adela Zamudio Prize for activism-focused Caribbean scholarship, and the 2022 Marielle Franco Prize for her project on Afro-Brazilian author Maria Firmina dos Reis.

Her publications include the 2023 monograph Entre el bronce y el olvido, co-editing special issues on Afro-Latin American women and transnational suffrage movements, and articles in Meridional, Latin American Literary Review, and Afro-Hispanic Review. Professor Aguilar Dornelles teaches courses on Latin American Theatre, Diaspora Studies, and anti-racism, emphasizing intersectional approaches to cultural production. Through her directorship of the Americas Initiative, she promotes interdisciplinary research on hemispheric cultural connections.

Her scholarly work interrogates how marginalized voices—particularly Black women—negotiate freedom, identity, and resistance through literature and performance. Recent projects explore antislavery discourses, maternal symbolism in abolitionist narratives, and the role of theatre in shaping racial and gendered subjectivities in 19th-century Brazil and the Caribbean.