Benigno Trigo

Professor of Spanish and Portuguese

Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities

My areas of research include Latin American Literature; Women’s Writing; Psychoanalysis; Puerto Rican studies and Autobiography. I am particularly interested in thinking through the intersection of the body and writing. My publications include Malady and Genius: Self-Sacrifice in Puerto Rican Literature (2016), Remembering Maternal Bodies (2006), Subjects of Crisis (2000), Noir Anxiety (Co-authored with Kelly Oliver, 2003) and two edited collections: Kristeva’s Fictions (2013) and Foucault and Latin America (2002). I have also published articles in Academic journals such as Cultural Critique, Revista Hispánica Moderna, MLN, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Revista Iberoamericana, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, and others.  I teach courses on coloniality, autobiography, the melancholy novel and foundational fictions.  I have served the profession through committees in my professional association (MLA).  I am a member of the editorial board for Revista de Estudios Hispánicos and Dissidences. I have served my community by sitting on the board of directors of the Luis A Ferré Foundation, of the Ponce Museum of Art, and on the Education Council of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. I served the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Vanderbilt as Chair from 2015-2018.