William Luis
Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Spanish
William Luis is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt of Spanish at Vanderbilt University.He has held teaching positions at Dartmouth College, Yale University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Binghamton University.Professor Luis was awarded a 2012-2013 Guggenheim Fellowship for his project entitled “The Life and Works of the Cuban Slave Poet Juan Francisco Manzano.” He was also the 2012 keynote speaker at an international conference at the University of Accra, Ghana. Professor Luis has published thirteen books and more than one hundred scholarly articles.His authored books include Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative (1990), Dance Between Two Cultures: Latino Caribbean Literature Written in the United States (1997), Culture and Customs of Cuba (2001), Lunes de Revolución: Literatura y cultura en los primeros años de la Revolución Cubana (2003), Juan Francisco Manzano: Autobiografía del esclavo poeta y otros escritos (2007), and Las vanguardias del Caribe: Cuba, Puerto Rico y la República Dominicana (2010). Luis has also written introductions or forwards to anthologies and books, and some of these are : “Tato Laviera: Mix(ing) t(hro)u(gh) ou(t),” Mixturao by Tato Laviera (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2008), “Exile and Return in Changó, el gran putas.”Changó: The Biggest Badass by Manuel Zapata Olivella, trans. Jonathan Tittler (Lubove: Texas Tech University Press, 2010); and “Latino Identity and the Desiring Machine,” The Other Latino, eds. Blas Falconer and Lorraine M. López, Tucson: Arizona University Press, 2011.Also, Luis is the editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review. Born and raised in New York City, Luis is widely regarded as a leading authority on Latin American, Caribbean, Afro-Hispanic, and Latino U.S. literatures.
Selected Publications
Books:
Edited with Edmundo Desnoes, Los dispositivos en la flor. Hanover, NH: Ediciones del Norte, 1981.
Edited, Voices from Under: Black Narrative in Latin America and the Caribbean. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.
Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
Edited with Julio Rodríguez-Luis, Translating Latin America: Culture as Text. Translation Perspectives VI. Binghamton: State University of New York at Binghamton, 1991.
Edited, Modern Latin American Fiction Writers, First Series. Detroit: Gale Press, 1992.
Edited with Ann González, Modern Latin American Fiction Writers, Second Series. Detroit: Gale Press, 1994.
Edited, "Antología: Poesía hispano-caribeña escrita en los Estados Unidos," Boletín de la Fundación Federico García Lorca, 18 (December, 1995), 17-93.
Dance Between Two Cultures: Latino-Caribbean Literature Written in the United States. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997; paperback edition, 2001.
Culture and Customs of Cuba. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, November 2001.
Lunes de Revolución: Literatura y cultura en los primeros años de la Revolución Cubana. Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2003.
Juan Francisco Manzano. Autobiografía del esclavo poeta y otros escritos. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2007.
Bibliografía y antología crítica de las vanguardias literarias del Caribe: Cuba, Puerto Rico, República Dominicana. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2010.
Introductions to Books:
“Introducción a Signo cimarrón.” Signo cimarrón by Edimilson de Almeida Pereira. Belo Horizonte: Mazza Ediçoes, 2005, 7-19.
“Tato Laviera: Mix(ing) t(hro)u(gh) ou(t).” Mixturao by Tato Laviera. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2008, ix-xxi.
“Exile and Return in Changó, el gran putas.” Changó: The Biggest Badass by Manuel Zapata Olivella. Trans. Jonathan Tittler. Lubove: Texas Tech University Press, 2010.
“Latino Identify and the Desiring-Machine.” The Other Latin@. Eds. Blas Falconer and Lorraine M. López. Tucson: Arizona University Press, 2010.