Edgar Garcia

Edgar Garcia is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University (2015) and has taught at UChicago since 2015. His work bridges poetry, poetics, and anthropology, focusing on hemispheric American literatures, indigenous and Latino studies, and the intersection of crisis and creativity.

• Ph.D., Yale University
• B.A., University of California, Berkeley
• A.A., Chaffey Community College

His research explores marginalized cultural practices such as non-alphabetical sign systems (pictographs, khipu), dreams, divination, and magic, emphasizing their role in world-making. Teaching involves creative and critical approaches to poetry, with courses on the Popol Vuh, migrant poetics, and dream ethnography.

Recent publications include Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis (2022) and Signs of the Americas (2019), analyzing indigenous epistemologies and experimental literary forms. His in-process works include Migrant Lots (risk analysis beyond demographics) and Caravaggio’s Americas (baroque-indigenous intersections).

• Franke Institute Residential Fellow (2024-2025)
• Discipline Representative for the Americas, Renaissance Society of America (2026-2028)
• Guest Editor-in-Chief, Fence (2022-2024)

Garcia advises BA, MA, and PhD students in 20th-century poetry and poetics, often integrating creative components into his courses. He collaborates with interdisciplinary teams in theatre and opera and contributes to archival and museological projects.