www.lazarolima.com - Research and Scholarship

In my research and scholarship I explore how the intersections of nationalism, race, language, gender, and sexuality have given rise to majority conceptions of "minority" subjectivity in the United States as well as how subaltern affronts against entrenched notions of "American" cultural identity have transformed the nation. My book, The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory (New York University Press, 2007), examines key historical crisis moments in United States cultural history that have shaped and given rise to what today we would consider "Latina" and "Latino" forms of personhood. The book analyzes how print culture after the end of the U.S-Mexico War of 1848 reconfigured race relations in the United States by organizing national belonging around an axis of race as opposed to the category of citizenship in jurisprudence. It is for this reason, for example, that the national signifier "Mexican" became a racial designation in the United States rather than one of national affiliation after the incorporation of almost half of Mexico’s territories.

My scholarly work has also appeared in academic journals, edited volumes, reviews, popular press pieces, and internet journalism. Some representative articles, in both thematic content and methodological scope, include "Deseos de estados 'queer' en la producción crítica latina de los Estados Unidos," Revista Iberoamericana (Vol. LXXIV, Number 225, October-December, 2008: 959-971), "Latino Louisiana," in Latino America, Mark Overmeyer-Velazquez, ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: 2008: 347-361), "Locas al rescate: The Transnational Hauntings of Queer Cubanidad," in Cuba Transnational, Damián Fernández, ed. (University Press of Florida, 2005: 79-103), "Spanish Speakers and Early 'Latino' Expression," in American History through Literature, 1820-1870, Janet Gabler-Hover and Robert D. Sattelmeyer, eds. (New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 2005: 1118-1123), and "Haunting the Corpus Delicti: Rafael Campo's What the Body Told and Wallace Stevens' Modernist Body" (The Wallace Stevens Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2, Fall 2001: 220-231), which was chosen as a companion article for Rafael Campos' poetry in Twentieth Century American Poetry (McGraw Hill, 2003), as well as other publications.

I am currently writing a book on Puerto Rican nationalism and its relation to United States empire building in the Caribbean and the emergence of neoliberal control over culturally "sovereign" states. This latest book project, tentatively titled Boricua Insurgencies: Puerto Rico, Colonial Nationalism, and Counterhegemony, was recently supported by a Fellowship and Grant from the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Humanities Forum and forms the basis of my documentary film Imperial Science: "Testimonios" from the Puerto Rican Contraceptive Pill Trials.

Lázaro Lima biography

The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory (New York University Press, 2007)

PRESS REVIEWS:

"Lima's book makes several crucial contributions. First, it is based on the intersections of various disciplines, such as American, Latin American, and Latino studies with ethnic, queer, gender and cultural studies, allowing for interdisciplinary readings that focus on the multiple dimensions of cultural productions. Second, Lima combines solid historiographical research with literary and cultural analysis, promoting critical interventions that are not seduced by empty impositions of 'high' or 'abstract' theory on literature as a primary, untheorized discourse; on the contrary, Lima takes into consideration each text's very specific context of production [...] Finally, the book has an excellent balance between new... and paradigmatic texts in the canon of Chicano/Latino studies."

—Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies

"Memory, and the visceral pun in Lima's term 're-membering,' tie the various threads in The Latino Body together even as Lima seeks to unravel other threads, other memories. Those interested in deepening their own understanding of Latino literature and culture… may find The Latino Body as practical as it is challenging and intriguing.

—Mark Noe, Journal of Latinos and Education

"In this provocative study, Lázaro Lima links the difficulties the Latino subject faces in the mainstream American imaginary to the “literal and metaphorical divide between Mexico” and the U.S. [...] Lima's examination concerns the limits and parameters of citizenship. Reading a wide range of texts, he provides a sophisticated and important critique of the limits of US citizenship for Latinos. This text, a worthy contribution to American Studies, inspires more critical analyzes of the crisis of Latino bodies in US literary and cultural discourses."

—Vanessa K. Valdés, MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.

"Lima’s book exemplifies the interdisciplinary, comparative promise of a discernable Latino studies project…. refreshingly defies canonical confinement or temporal restriction. The Latino Body usefully serves as a map for those striving to stake scholarly claims in the name of Latino studies. [He] offers pointed and measured readings that extend beyond clever interpretation to manifest politically rooted and socially relevant commentary."

—R. T. Rodríguez, Latino Studies

"Lima mueve su análisis ágilmente entre discursos literarios y genealogías políticas e históricas diversas, demonstrando ser un apto interlocutor tanto de la producción cultural mexico-americana del siglo diecinueve como de la obra reciente de autores de las diásporas caribeñas."

—Carlos Decena, Revista Iberoamericana

“An engaging, original, readable work. . . . Highly recommended.”

—CHOICE

EDITORIAL REVIEWS

"Through a bricolage of carefully crafted textual readings, Lima has produced a text that traces the relationship between corporeality and citizenship by marking the process by which the Latino body has become historical. Situated in moments of national and bodily crisis, his archive is decidedly precise and imaginatively expansive, metaphorically rich and politically dynamic. Drawing on texts central to third world feminism, queer studies, and Latin and Latino American literatures, this work is as central to rethinking the American literary canon as it is to an invigorating remapping of Latino Studies."

"Spanish Speakers and Early 'Latino' Expression," in American History through Literature, 1820-1870, Janet Gabler-Hover and Robert D. Sattelmeyer, eds. (New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 2005: 1118-1123)

"Locas al rescate: The Transnational Hauntings of Queer Cubanidad," in Cuba Transnational, Damián Fernández, ed. (University Press of Florida, 2005: 79-103)

Twentieth Century American Poetry, Dana Gioia, David Mason, and Meg Schoerke, eds. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2003)