_{My interest in Hispanic culture began with an immersion into Spanish language after receiving my Bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland.  The time I spent in Madrid and in Cádiz instilled in me a fascination for the Spanish language and its regional variants, and an almost visceral attraction to the music of the Spanish-speaking world.}

_{After my time in Spain I went on to complete an M.A. at the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Emory University. While doing my graduate work, I came across two cultural products that would shape my scholarly interests. Few films have impacted me like the masterpiece by the late, great Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Memories of Underdevelopment, a film about which I would go on to write my Masters thesis. While at Emory I had a similar experience with the novels of Alejo Carpentier, especially El reino de este mundo and El siglo de las luces, which went on to play a major role in shaping my dissertation.}

_{I have published several articles in the area of Cuban and Caribbean culture and literature in journals such as MLN and Latin American Literary Review and Afro-Hispanic Review. A chapter I co-authored on "Literature and Popular Culture" appeared in Understanding the Contemporary Caribbean (Lynne Rienner, 2003, Second edition 2009) and an essay on the Cuban composer Leo Brouwer in a volume titled, Music, Writing and Cultural Unity in the Caribbean.}

_{My Book, Elusive Origins: The Enlightenment in the Modern Caribbean Historical Imagination, is currently in press with the University of Virginia Press and is scheduled to appear in April, 2010. In this monograph I have essays on writers from the Hispanic, Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean whose common thread is their representation of the impact of Enlightenment philosophy, along with the French and Haitian Revolutions, on the unfolding of Caribbean modernity.}

_{With well over a decade of teaching experience, I have taught Caribbean literature, Latin American literature as well as Spanish and French language courses at many different universities, such as the University of Maryland, the University of Miami, Emory University, Georgia State University, North Carolina State University, and finally here at Vanderbilt since 2001.} 

_{I have introduced into the curriculum at Vanderbilt a course I call "Jews and Judaism in Latin American and Caribbean Literature" that I have taught in Spanish and English.  My last four conference papers have dealt with this topic and I am planning a second book project tentatively titled "Other America, Other language: The Dialectics of Assimilation and Tradition in Latin American and Caribbean Jewish Literature."}