Jennifer Harford Vargas

Associate Professor of Literatures in English on the Dorothy Nepper Marshall Professorship of Hispanic and Hispanic-American Studies
Co-Director of LAILS
Jennifer Harford Vargas headshot

Contact

Phone 610-526-5309
Location English House 205
On Leave
2024-25

Education

Ph.D., Stanford University.

Areas of Focus

Latina/o literary and cultural productions; contemporary U.S. literatures; trans-national American studies

Biography

Jennifer Harford Vargas (PhD, Stanford University) researches and teaches on Latina/o cultural production, hemispheric American studies, race and ethnicity, theories of the novel, decolonial imaginaries, narratives of undocumented migration, and testimonio forms in the Americas.

She is the author of Forms of Dictatorship: Power, Narrative, and Authoritarianism in the Latina/o Novel (Oxford University Press, 2017). 

She is also the co-editor of Junot D铆az and the Decolonial Imagination (Duke University Press, 2016).

Additional publications include:

  • "The Undocumented Subjects of el Hueco: Theorizing a Colombian Metaphor for Migration.鈥&苍产蝉辫;Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics. Special issue edited by Patricia M. Garc铆a and John Mor谩n Gonz谩lez. (forthcoming, Fall 2017)
  • 鈥淭ransnational Forms.鈥 Co-authored with Monica Hanna. Latina/o Literature in the Classroom: 21stCentury Approaches to Teaching. Ed. Frederick Aladama. Routledge, 2015.
  • 鈥淣ovel Testimony: Alternative Archives in Edwidge Danticat鈥檚 The Farming of Bones.鈥&苍产蝉辫;Callaloo. 37.5 (Fall 2014): 1162-1180.
  • 鈥淒ictating a Zafa: The Power of Narrative Form in Junot D铆az鈥檚 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States. 39.3 (Fall 2014): 8-30.
  • 鈥淐ritical Realisms in the Global South: Narrative Transculturation in Senapati鈥檚 Six Acres and a Third and Garc铆a M谩rquez鈥檚 One Hundred Years of Solitude.鈥 Ed. Satya Mohanty. Colonialism, Modernity, and the Study of Literature: A View from India. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Courses Taught

  • ESEM 008: 鈥淏orders.鈥
  • ENGL 217: 鈥淣arratives of Latinidad鈥
  • ENGL 236: "Latina/o Culture and the Art of Undocumented Migration"
  • ENGL 237: 鈥淭he Dictator Novel in the Americas鈥
  • ENGL 250: 鈥淢ethods of Literary Study鈥
  • ENGL 276: 鈥淭ransnational American Literature鈥
  • ENGL 345: 鈥淭heories of the Ethnic Novel