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Sergio Mora Moreno

Profile picture for Sergio Mora Moreno

Contact Information

4150A Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics Bldg.
707 S. Mathews Ave. | MC-176
Urbana, IL 61801
PhD Candidate
Fellow
TA

Biography

Sergio Mora Moreno is a Hispanic Literatures and Cultures Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He holds a B.A. in Literary Studies from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, with a minor in Publishing Studies, and an M.A in Literature from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. His work has focused on the problems and representations of the body in the 20th and 21st centuries in Latin American Literature, especially in Colombian and Cuban narratives, emphasizing embodiment discourse formations and biopolitics. His research continues to explore the subject of the body within narratives by and about trans and gender-variant individuals through the lens of trans studies, queer theory, continental philosophy, and ecocriticism.

 

Research Interests

  • Trans and queer Latin American narratives
  • Body studies
  • Trans studies
  • Queer theory
  • Continental philosophy
  • Ecocriticism 

Research Description

My dissertation investigates how contemporary Colombian trans narratives reconfigure the categories shaping the idea of the human through trans epistemologies and community resistance amidst violence. By analyzing autobiographies, videoperformances, fiction, and cinema produced in alternative spaces, it examines how these works challenge exclusionary social, political, and aesthetic systems that marginalize trans lives. Rooted in Trans Studies, and Critical Theory, I argue that these narratives dismantle binaries defining humanity, decentering cis-heteropatriarchal norms. These aesthetic productions transform violence-marked spaces into sites of resistance, solidarity, and speculative futures, proposing new ways to inhabit the world and reimagine relationality across human and non-human entities.

 

Education

  • PhD. Hispanic Literatures and Cultures - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (in progress)
  • MA. Literature - Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, 2015
  • BA. Literary Studies - Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia, 2011

Grants

  • Timothy J. Rogers Memorial Summer Fellowship (Summer 2024)
  • Whitten Fellowship, CLACS, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2023
  • Graduate College Dissertation Travel Grant, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Declined), 2023

Awards and Honors

  • Best Graduate Student Paper Competition 2023-2024, Department of Spanish and Portuguese. 
  • Conference Participation Award from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2023)                                         
  • Conference Travel Award, Graduate College, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2022)
  • Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in the Humanities and Arts (2021)

 

Courses Taught

SPAN 122 - Beginner Spanish 

SPAN 130 - Intermediate Spanish

SPAN 254 - Approaches to Culture

SPAN 232 - Spanish in the Community 

SPAN 326 - Latin American Cultural Studies II "El cuerpo latinoamericano"

Additional Campus Affiliations

Unit for Criticism and Interpretative Theory 

Recent Publications

  • Mora Moreno, Sergio Antonio (2022). La desnaturalización de la Violencia a partir de dos cuentos de Hernando Téllez. In Jarrín B, H., Bautista-cabrera, Á., & Delgado, H, Instantáneas del cuento latinoamericano (pp. 317–326). essay, Universidad ICESI, Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, Universidad del Valle. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18046/EUI/ee.2.2022
  • Mora Moreno, Sergio Antonio, and Jorge Mario Sánchez Noguera. “El Eros amenazado: cuerpos y territorios ganados en Un mundo huérfano de Giuseppe Caputo.” Revista Letral, no. 24, 24, July 2020, pp. 120–38. https://doi.org/10.30827/rl.v0i24.11544.
  • Mora Moreno, Sergio Antonio, et al. Escritura en la universidad: redactar y enseñar textos académicos. Universidad Santiago de Cali, 2020.
  • Noguera, Jorge Mario Sánchez, and Sergio Antonio Mora Moreno. “El hogar imposible: la experiencia del desarraigo en Tiempo muerto de Margarita García Robayo.” Estudios de Literatura Colombiana, no. 46, 46, 2020, pp. 37–54. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.elc.n46a02.
  • Mora Moreno, Sergio Antonio. “Carne y nada más: la configuración del discurso cárnico en La Carne de René de Virgilio Piñera.” La Palabra, no. 30, 30, July 2017, pp. 243–59. https://doi.org/10.19053/01218530.n30.2017.6203.