Alexander von Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Island of Cuba. Transl. from the French by J. Bradford Anderson, Anja Becker, and Vera M. Kutzinski. With Annotations by Anja Becker, Tobias Kraft, and Giorleny D. Altamirano Rayo. Ed. with an Introduction by Vera M. Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

A History of Literature in the Caribbean. Vol. 2: The Anglophone and Dutch Caribbean. With Ineke Phaf and A. James Arnold. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001.

Sugar's Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1993.

Nicolás Guillén's “The Daily Daily.” Translated with an Introduction. Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1989.

Against the American Grain: Myth and History in William Carlos, Williams, Jay Wright, and Nicolás Guillén. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987. (Winner of the Gustave Arlt Award.)

Guest Editor. Special Issue on Nicolás Guillén. Callaloo #10 (1987).

Coeditor. (with Robert B. Stepto). European Contributions to Afro‑American Studies. Callaloo (1985).

“Literature as Knowledge for Living, Literary Studies as Science for Living” by Ottmar Ette. Translated from the German and Edited with an Introduction by Vera M. Kutzinski. PMLA 125:4 (Oct. 2010): 997-93.

"Alexander von Humboldt's transatlantic personae." Atlantic Studies Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives 7:2 (2010): 99-112.

"Everything is interrelated, even the errors in the system: Alexander von Humboldt and globalization." Atlantic Studies Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives 7:2 (2010): 113-26. (Translation)


"Translations of Cuba: Fernando Ortiz, Alexander von Humboldt, and the curious case of John Sidney Thrasher." Atlantic Studies Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives 6:3 (2009): 303-26.

"Humboldt's translator in the context of Cuban history." Atlantic Studies Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives 6:3 (2009): 327-43. (Translation)

“Fearful Asymmetries: Langston Hughes, Nicolás Guillén, and Cuba Libre.” diacritics 34.3-4 (2004): 1-29. (published in November 2007)

“Caribbean Literary History and its Sexual Others.” Caribbean Interfaces. Ed. Lieven D’hulst, Jean-Marc Moura, Liesbeth De Bleeker and Nadia Lie. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 35-45.

“’Yo también soy América’: Langston Hughes Translated.” ALH 18.3 (2006): 550-78.

“Literatura afrohispanoamericana.” Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana. Vol. II: El siglo XX. Eds. Roberto González Echevarría and Enrique Pupo-Walker. Madrid: Gredos, 2006. 185-213.

“Limbo negro: Jay Wright y su mitología de la escritura.” Trans. Roberto González Echevarría. Mandorla: Nueva Escritura de las Américas 7 (Spring 2004): 34-62.

“Cuba Libre: Langston Hughes y Nicolás Guillén.” Cuba: Un siglo de literartura (1902-2002), pp. 129-46. Ed. Anke Birkenmaier and Roberto González Echevarría. Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2004.

“Borders, Bodies, and Regions: The United States and the Caribbean.” Companion to Regional American Literature. Ed. Charles Crow. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, pp. 171-192.

"The Descent of Nommo: Literacy as Method in Jay Wright's `Benjamin Banneker Helps to Build a City.'" In Critical Essays on Jay Wright. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 2003. Reprinted from Callaloo # 6 (1983): 103‑119.

“Wilson Harris’s Phantom Bodies. Re-reading the Subject.” Theatre of the Arts. Wilson Harris and the Caribbean. Ed. Hena Maes-Jelinek and Benedicte Ledent. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2002, pp. 139-51.

“Borders and Bodies: America, the United States, and the Caribbean.” New Centennial Review 1.2 (2001): 53-86.

“Improprieties: Feminism, Queerness, and Caribbean Literature.” Macalester International 11 (Summer 2001): 165-206.

“Introduction: Anglophone Caribbean Literature.” A History of Literature in the Caribbean, Vol. 2: Ed. Ineke Phaf, Vera M. Kutzinski, and A. James Arnold. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001.

“Changing Permanences: Historical and Literary Revisionism in Robert Hayden's 'Middle Passage.” In Robert Hayden. Essays on the Poetry. Ed. Laurence Goldstein and Robert Chrisman. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001, pp. 306-21. Reprinted from Callaloo 9 (1986): 171-83.

“Realism and Reversibility in Wilson Harris’s Carnival.” Special Issue on Wilson Harris. The Journal of Caribbean Literatures II.1, 2 & 3 (Spring 2000): 147-67.

“Jay Wright.” African-American Writers. Vol. 2. Rev. ed. Ed. Valerie Smith. New York: Scribner’s, 2001.

“Wilson Harris.” British Writers. Supplement V. Ed. George Stade. New York: Scribner’s, 2000.

"Johnson Revises Johnson: Oxherding Tale and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man." In I Call Myself an Artist. Writings by and about Charles Johnson. Ed. Rudolph Byrd. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999, pp. 279-87. Reprinted from Pacific Philology 23 (1988): 39-46. 

"The Cult of Caliban: Narrative Authority and Resistance in Caribbean Literature.” A History of Literature in the Caribbean. Vol. 3: Cross-Cultural Studies. Ed.A. James Arnold. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1997, pp. 286-302.

“New Personalities: Race, Sexuality, and Gender in Wilson Harris’s Recent Fiction.” Review of Contemporary Fiction. 17.2 (Summer 1997): 72-76.

"Afro-Hispanic Literature." The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature. Ed. Roberto González Echevarría and Enrique Pupo-Walker. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Vol. 2, pp. 164-94.

"The Logic of Wings: Gabriel García Márquez and Afro‑American Literature." In Gabriel García Márquez. Ed. Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House, 1989; and in Gabriel García Márquez: Modern Literatures in Perspectives. London: Longman, 1995. Reprinted from Latin American Literary Review 13 (1985): 133‑146.

"The Composition of Reality: An Interview with Wilson Harris." Callaloo Special Issue on Wilson Harris 18:1 (Winter 1995): 15-32. Nicolás Guillén." Masterpieces of Latino Literature. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 1995.

(with Cynthia Mesh). "Convergences: Reading Léonora." Afterword to the English Translation of Dany Bébel-Gisler's Léonora: L'histoire enfouie de la Guadeloupe (1985). CARAF Books, UP of Virginia, 1995.

"Caribbean Literary Criticism." The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, pp. 138-42. Updated in 2003 and 2004 for on-line version.

"William Carlos Williams." The Companion to American Thought. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.

"The Poetry of Jay Wright." Masterpieces of African-American Literature. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 1993.

"American Literary History as Spatial Practice." ALH 4.3 (Fall 1992): 550-557.

"Jay Wright." Critical Survey of Poetry: English Language Series. Revised Edition. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 1992, 3682-3693.

"Turbulence and Noise: Translating Nicolás Guillén's El diario que a diario." Translating Latin America: Culture as Text. Ed. William Luis and Julio Rodríguez-Luis. Binghamton, NY: Center for Research in Translation, SUNY Binghamton, 1991, pp. 241-248.

“Unseasonal Flowers: Nature and History in Plácido and Jean Toomer." Yale Journal of Criticism 3:2 (Spring 1990): 153-179.

"History, Literature, and the Problem of Synthesis," in Reconstructing American Literary and Historical Studies. Ed. Günter H. Lenz, Hartmut Keil, Sabine Bröck-Sallah. Frankfurt & New York: Campus Verlag & St. Martin's Press 1990, pp. 128-144.      

"Nicolás Guillén" (Bibliographical-critical essay), in Latin American Writers, ed. Carlos A. Solé and María Isabel Abreu. 3 Vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989. Vol. 2, pp. 947-954.

"Re-reading Nicolás Guillén. An Introduction." Special Issue on Nicolás Guillén. Callaloo #10 (1987), 161-67.

"The Distant Closeness of Dancing Doubles: Sterling Brown and William Carlos Williams." Black American Literature Forum 16 (1982): 19‑25. Reprinted in Poetry Criticism (Gale).

Review essay: Deborah Cohn and Jon Smith, eds. Look Away! Mississippi Quarterly 59.3-4 (Summer-Fall 2006): 644-49.

Review of John Gilmore's The Poetics of Empire: A Study of James Grainger’s The Sugar Cane (1764). New West Indian Guide (Netherlands) 76:1&2 (2002).

Review of Ada Ferrer's Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898. Social History 26.1 (2001): 128-30.

Review of Heather Hathaway's Caribbean Waves. Relocating Claude McKay and Paule Marshall. African-American Review 35.2 (2001): 327-28.

Review of Belinda Edmondson's Making Men: Gender, Literary Authority and Women’s Writing in Caribbean Narrative. Journal of Colonial History (electronic publication, 2000)

Review of Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnificent. African-American Review (1999).

Review of Lois Parkinson Zamora’s The Usable Past: The Imagination of History in Recent Fiction of the Americas. American Literature (1999).

Review of Robin Moore’s Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940. American Historical Review (1999).

Review of Lorna Williams’s The Representation of Slavery in Cuban Fiction. New West Indian Guide  (Netherlands) 72.3&4 (1998): 38-40.

"Discourses of the Rhumba." Review of Antonio Benítez Rojo's The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. San Francisco Review of Books 18:3 (1993): 25-26.

Review of Jay Wright's Boleros. Magill's Literary Annual. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1992: 56-59.

Review of Roberto Fernández Retamar's Caliban. Modern Philology 89:2 (1991).

Review of Arnold Rampersad's The Life of Langston Hughes. Journal of American History (1991): 701-2.

Review of History and Tradition in Afro-American Culture, ed. Günter H. Lenz. Amerikastudien / American Studies #2 (1990).

"The Miraculous Weapons of Nicolás Guillén and Aimé Césaire." Review Essay, Callaloo 7 (1984): 140‑ 150. Reprinted in Callaloo 9 (1986): 740-748.  

Review of Marvin A. Lewis's Afro‑Hispanic Poetry, 1940‑1980. Latin American Literary Review 14 (1987): 93-95

"Tale of a Black, a River, and Other Blacks." Review essay on Adalberto Ortiz's Juyungo. Hambone 4 (1984):78‑180.

"Poetry and Politics: Two Books on Nicolás Guillén." Review essay, MLN Hispanic Issue, 98 (1983): 275‑284.

"Something Strange and Miraculous and Transforming." Review essay on Jay Wright's The Double Invention of Komo. Hambone 2 (1982): 129‑134.

Report of the Teaching Fellow Review Committee (“Kutzinski Report”). Yale, May 1996.