David Lisenby

Assistant Professor of Hispanic and Italian Studies

Degree/Institution: PhD University of Kansas
Office: HU 212
Phone: (518) 442-4222/4100
Fax: (518) 442-4111
Email: dlisenby@albany.edu

 

Academic Focus

19th – 21st century Latin American narrative and theatre; Theories of race, ethnicity, nation, and diaspora; Cuban literature and culture.

Bio

David Lisenby earned PhD and MA degrees from the University of Kansas and a BS from Vanderbilt University. He joined the department as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2012.

David’s research interests center broadly on constructions of racial and cultural identity in Latin American literature and cultural work, particularly of the Spanish Caribbean, the Andean region, Mexico, and Brazil. His dissertation analyzed contemporary Cuban works that revisit nineteenth century literary figures through parody, historiographic metafiction, and the performative repetition of cultural tropes. He is currently continuing research on post-Soviet Cuba and also initiating a comparative project on nineteenth-century abolitionist novels from Cuba and Brazil.

Teaching

Representative Spanish American Literature, Indigenist Literature, Short Stories, National Romances, Cuban Literature and Film.

Selected Publications

“Decolonizing Tepan: Adaptive Resistance and Alternative Nationhood in Elena Garro’s La dama boba.” Chasqui: Revista de literatura latinoamericana 42.1 (2013): 117-27. Forthcoming

 “Frustrated Mulatta Aspirations: Reincarnations of Cecilia Valdés in Post-Soviet Cuba.” Afro-Hispanic Review 31.1 (2012). Afro-Hispanic Review 31.1 (2012): 87-104.