María Cristina Pons
Biography
Professor María Cristina Pons was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Due to political repression in her home country, she went into exile in 1976. She lived in Mexico City for ten years, then move to Canada and later to California. She received her M.A. in Latin American Literature from the University of Alberta, Canada, and her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. She was a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, and has taught Chicano Studies and Latin American studies as faculty of the César Chávez Department at UCLA since 1998. She is the author of Más allá de las fronteras del lenguaje: Un análisis critico de Respiración artificial, a critical study of the coded ficitional writing under censorhip, which was published by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1998. She also published an analytical and theoretical study of the Latin American historical novel,Memorias del olvido: Del Paso, Garcia Márquez, Saer y la novela histórica de fines del siglo XX, also published in México by Siglo XXI, 1996. This book became an internationally well known and widely used by University faculty and students abroad.
Education
- PhD, Latin American Literature, University of Southern California (1995)
- MA, Latin American Literature, University of Alberta, Canada (1990)
Research
Professor María Cristina Pons’ teaching and research interests focus on the intersections of Latin American Literature and culture, and Chicano Studies, with especial focus on cultural production and representations. Her research agenda has focused primarily on alternative discourses to the hegemonic social order, including research on the contemporary historical novel in Latin America, as well as counter-hegemonic narratives within the context of Southern Cone military dictatorships, and cultural representations in the context of globalization and neoliberalism. Currently she is working on a project on Chicanas/Latinas and Latin American women writers from a comparative perspective.
She is particularly interested in the intersections and divergences found between them along the lines of class, gender, sexuality and race.
Selected Publications
Books
- Pons, María Cristina, and Claudia Soria, eds. Delirios de grandeza. Los mitos argentinos: memoria, identidad y cultura. Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2005.
- Pons, María Cristina. Más allá de las fronteras del lenguaje. Un análisis crítico de Respiración artificial de Ricardo Piglia. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1998.
- Pons, María Cristina. Memorias del olvido. Del Paso, García Márquez, Saer y la novela histórica de fines del siglo XX. México, Siglo XXI, 1996.
Articles and Book Chapters
- Pons, María Cristina. “The Boom and the Contemporary Historical Novel: Continuities and Ruptures.” Lucille Kerr and Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola (eds.), Teaching the Latin American Boom, for the MLA’s Options for Teaching Series. Modern Language Association (forthcoming).
- Pons, María Cristina. “Carlos Monsiváis: The Reality of Myth.” Debra Castillo and Stuart Day (eds.) Mexican Public Intellectuals. Vanderbilt University Press (forthcoming).
- Pons, María Cristina. “Neoliberalismo y literatura: entre una retórica mercenaria y la autonomía de un arte crítico”. Espéculo: Revista de crítica literaria de la Universidad Complutense, No. 40, Nov. 2008-Feb. 2009.
- Pons, María Cristina. “Monsi-caos: la política, la poética o la caótica de las crónicas de Carlos Monsiváis.” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 51 (January 2000): 125-139. Reprinted in Mabel Moraña and Ignacio Sanchez-Prado (eds.), Carlos Monsiváis: el arte de la ironía, Mexico: editorial ERA y UNAM, 2007. 107-123.
- Pons, Maria Cristina. “Cultural Myths and Chicana Literature: a field in dispute” In Contemporary Latin American Cultural Studies, Ed. Stephen Hart and Richard Young, London: Arnold Publishing, 2003.
- Pons, María Cristina. “La novela histórico-social en América Latina.” Perfiles Latinoamericanos. Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, Mexico), Nº 15,1999: 139-170.
- “The Cannibalism of History: The Historical Representation of an Absent Other in El entenado by Juan José Saer.” R. Young, et al. Latin American Postmodernism, Studies in Postmodernism. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. 155-174.
- Pons, María Cristina. “Noticias del Imperio: entre una imaginación delirante y los desvarios de la historia.” Hispamérica 69 (1994): 97-108.
- Pons, María Cristina. “Compromiso político y ficción en ‘Segunda Vez’ y ‘Apocalipsis de Solentiname’ de Julio Cortázar.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología (UNAM) 4 (1992): 183-203.
