People A-Z
Javier Jimenez
Assistant Professor of Spanish and Director of the Latin American Studies Program
Dept: Modern Languages
740-376-4378
Office: Thomas 212
Degrees: PhD, Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley
MA, English Literature, San Francisco State University
BA, History-Sociology, Columbia University
Expertise: Latin American Literature, particularly Spanish Caribbean and Brazilian narrative, and Latin American and Latino culture.
Year appointed: 2012
Dr. Jimenez teaches courses in Spanish language, Latin American literature and culture, and U.S. Latino literature and culture. In his courses, students develop not only their Spanish language skills but also their critical thinking skills, both of which are integral parts of a liberal arts education. Dr. Jimenez enjoys creating and maintaining strong bonds with students as well as advising them in the pursuit of their goals.
Dr. Jimenez scholarship focuses on the literature and culture of the Spanish Caribbean and Brazil, especially on the intersections between literature and politics. His current book project, Regarding American Customs: Making Sense out of Costumbrismo in Latin American Literature and Art, analyzes how nineteenth-century literary and visual forms marshaled the techniques of the custom sketch to create a spectral national history, or myth, as an alternative to colonial history. As part of this analysis, the book project engages questions of literary form as well as politics in Cuba and Brazil. Dr. Jimenez also studies race and sexuality in contemporary diasporic Latin American and Latino literature and film.