Research Interests
20th and 21st-Century Latin American Literature and Film, with a focus on Mexico and Central America
Environmental Humanities: Posthumanism, Ecocriticism, and Animal Studies
Critical Theories of Race, Gender, and Disability
Research Description
Carolyn Fornoff's research engages Mexican and Central American culture through the lens of ecocriticism. It explores how artists and writers portray the intersection between environmental and social justice through representational modes that range from speculative fiction to the documentary.
Fornoff's in-process monograph, Uncertain Futures: Environmental Change in Mexico and Central America, considers contemporary representations of anthropogenic environmental change. It asks how we anticipate and adapt to environmental transformations that are both underway and yet to come. It argues that the unpredictability of environmental rupture (and its corollaries, like drought and extinction) have put the future into doubt, prompting writers and artists to reimagine ways of living on a planet governed by different climatic rules.
As part of broader research in the environmental humanities, Fornoff is co-editing two collections:
Timescales: Ecological Temporalities Across Disciplines, co-edited with Bethany Wiggin and Patricia Kim, brings together interdisciplinary research on the question of time in the Anthropocene. Timescales is currently under production with University of Minnesota Press.
Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema, co-edited with Gisela Heffes, theorizes the rich cinematic production coming out of Latin America that attends to environmental questions. This volume is currently under review by SUNY Press.
Education
Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania
M.A. University of Pennsylvania
B.A. Rice University
Courses Taught
SPAN 326: Beyond the Human: Animals in Latin American Culture
SPAN 468: Latin American Natures
SPAN 326 (Spring 2020): Mexican Cinema
SPAN 467 (Spring 2020): Romance & Race in 19th century Latin America
Additional Campus Affiliations
Assistant Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Recent Publications
Fornoff, C. H., Kim, P. E., & Wiggin, B. (Accepted/In press). Coda. In B. Wiggin, C. Fornoff, & P. E. Kim (Eds.), Timescales: Thinking across Ecological Temporalities University of Minnesota Press.
Fornoff, C. H., Kim, P. E., & Wiggin, B. (Accepted/In press). Introduction: Environmental Humanities across Times, Disciplines, and Research Practices. In B. Wiggin, C. Fornoff, & P. E. Kim (Eds.), Timescales: Thinking across Ecological Temporalities University of Minnesota Press.
Fornoff, C. H. (2020). La carne que habla: filosofía y poesía mè’phàà en la obra de Hubert Matiúwàa. Revista de Critica Literaria Latinoamericana, 90, 121-138.
Wiggin, B., Fornoff, C. H., & Kim, P. E. (Accepted/In press). Timescales: Thinking across Ecological Temporalities. University of Minnesota Press.
Fornoff, C. H. (2019). Nahual. In M. Schneider-Mayerson, & B. R. Bellamy (Eds.), An Ecotopian Lexicon (pp. 163-175). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvthhdbm.22
