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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. student 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

The subject of the body has been at the center of my research trajectory. In this research stage, I plan to study how contemporary Latin American writing questions how life is constituted and understood in the context of modernity. With attention to works by and about trans and gender variant individuals and precarious lives, I aim to address how those narratives question the death mandate in order to think and create new possibilities of existence by challenging the limits and conceptions about the body.

 

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 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

  • Jornadas Andinas de Literatura Latinoamericana - JALLA 2022. La promesa queer: una respuesta a la crisis de la modernidad y medioambiental en La mucama de Omicunlé y Las aventuras de la China Iron.
  • Latin American Studies Association 2022. Thinking Ecocriticism from the Global South: Alternative Ecological Practices and Concepts in Literatures from the Americas. (Roundtable).
  • 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.