Wesleyan portrait of María  Ospina

María Ospina

Associate Professor of Spanish

300 High Street, 209
860-685-3105

Associate Professor, Latin American Studies

mospina@wesleyan.edu

BA Brown University
MA Harvard University
PHD Harvard University

María Ospina

Professor Ospina is a teacher and scholar of contemporary Latin American culture, and a fiction writer. She is the author of a collection of short stories titled Azares del cuerpo, in Colombia (Laguna), Chile (Edicola) and Spain (Las afueras), which has been translated into Italian (Edicola) and English (Variations on the Body, Cofee House Press, 2021). This book was longlisted for the Premio Hispanoamericano de Cuento Gabriel García Márquez in 2018.  Her novel Solo un poco aquí, about animal migrations and displacements, was published by Random House in 2023. Her stories have appeared in anthologies and literary journals in Colombia and the United States. Professor Ospina's critical work has focused on the central role that cultural artifacts play in the context of public discussions about the legacies of violence and in collective processes of making sense of contemporary crises that include the wars deployed around the drug trade and armed conflicts in Colombia and Latin America. Her book El rompecabezas de la memoria. Literatura, cine y testimonio de comienzos del siglo en Colombia (Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2019), studies how novels, films and testimonial practices rethink the figure of the witness and contribute to public understandings of history and to critical ethical reflections about violence and survival that exceed those emerging from conventional political debate and from judicial discourses. Other work focuses on contemporary constructions of so-called natural spaces (jungles, mountains, rural areas) in literature, film and contemporary mediascapes, where she investigates the ways in which cultural products challenge representations of these cultural geographies as sites of development projects, military expansion, and extractive capitalism, while tracing diverse forms of resistance. Other areas of interest include Latin American film, political ecology, ecofeminism, animal studies, environmental humanities, and gender and sexuality studies. 

Professor Ospina is the recipient of the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2022). 

PUBLICATIONS

Solo un poco aquí, (Bogotá: Literatura Random House, 2023) (novel)

Variations on the Body, Translated by Heather Cleary, (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press), 2021 (Short story collection)

Azares del cuerpo, (Madrid: Las Afueras, 2020);  (Santiago de Chile: Edícola Ediciones, 2019) ; (Bogotá: Laguna Libros, 2017, 2020) (Short story collection)

Gli azzardi del corpo, Translated by Amaranta Sbardella, (Italy: Edicola) Spring 2020 (Short story collection)

"Dosis impar," in the anthology of short stories Cuerpos. Veinte formas de habitar el mundo (Bogotá: Seix Barral, 2019) and in Contar la vida como contar los pasos. Antología a cargo de Luz Mary Giraldo. (Medellín: Sílaba Editora, 2023). Translated into English as Odd Dose, by Joel Streicker, 128Lit, Fall 2022 

El rompecabezas de la memoria. Literatura, cine y testimonio de comienzos del siglo en Colombia(Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2019)

"Natural Plots: The Rural Turn in Contemporary Colombian Cinema." In Territories of Conflict: Traversing Cultural Studies in Colombia. Eds. Alejandro Herrera-Olaizola, Andrea Fanta and Chloe Rutter-Jensen. Rochester (NY: University of Rochester Press, 2017)

"Los embelecos de la gramática: Lengua, literatura y herejías gramaticales en la obra de Fernando Vallejo." Cuadernos de Literatura 37 (Enero-junio 2015)

"Naturalezas de guerra: Topografías violentas de selva en la narrativa colombiana contemporánea." Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, Vol. 40, No. 79, 243-264 (2014)

"Trazados peligrosos: Topografías contemporáneas de selva en relatos colombianos de cautiverio." In Geografías imaginarias: Espacios de resistencia y crisis en América Latina. Ed. Marta Sierra. (Santiago de Chile: Cuarto Propio, 2013)

Cartas de la persistencia, Colección Libro al Viento, (Bogotá: Secretaría Distrital de Cultura, 2008). (Compilator) 

 

 

Academic Affiliations

Office Hours

Director of the Vassar Wesleyan Program in Madrid for 2023-2024