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Natalie Belisle

Assistant Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature
Pronouns She / Her / Hers Email nlbelisl@usc.edu

Research & Practice Areas

Contemporary Caribbean Literature, Visual Media, and Cultural Studies; Caribbean Phenomenology; Postcolonial and Decolonial theory; Political Philosophy; Speculative Fiction; Race and the African Diaspora in Latin America

Biography

My research is interested, broadly, in the centrality of the Caribbean to the formation and ordering of the modern world, post 1492, and the development and articulation of Western modernity and its attendant concepts—whether the human being and citizen, belonging, race, or home and property, to name a few.

I focus on literature, visual media, and cultural production from the contemporary Caribbean, both in terms of how they complicate the “official” archive of Western history and in terms of their entanglement with the sociopolitical formation of  postemancipation Latin America...

Education

  • A.B. Romance Languages and Literatures, The University of Chicago
  • M.A. Spanish, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Ph.D. Spanish, University of Wisconsin-Madison

  • Summary Statement of Research Interests

    Natalie L. Belisle’s research and teaching engage contemporary Caribbean literature, visual media, and cultural production. She is particularly interested in the relationship between aesthetics and political practice, racial mobilities in Latin America, political philosophy, and theories of existence in phenomenology and speculative fiction. Prof. Belisle is completing a book project Caribbean Inhospitality: The Poetics of Strangers at Home (under contract, Rutgers University Press).

    Research Specialties

    Contemporary Caribbean Literature, Visual Media, and Cultural Studies; Caribbean Phenomenology; Postcolonial and Decolonial theory; Political Philosophy; Speculative Fiction; Race and the African Diaspora in Latin America

    • (Fall 2019) SPAN 372. Modern and Contemporary Latin American Fiction, TTh, 03:30pm – 04:50pm, THHB10
    • (Spring 2020) SPAN 482. Literature and the City, TTh, 11:00am – 12:20pm, SOS B51
    • (Fall 2021) COLT 375. Latin American Cultural and Literary Theory, TTh, 09:30am – 10:50am, GFS 212
    • (Spring 2022) CSLC 503. Introduction to Comparative Studies in Culture, W, 02:00pm – 04:50pm
    • (Fall 2022) GESM 120. Seminar in Humanistic Inquiry – Reading Life and Death Beyond the Law, TTh, 09:30am – 10:50am, WPH107
    • (Fall 2022) SPAN 650. Topics in Spanish and Latin American Literature and Culture, T, 02:00pm – 04:50pm
    • (Spring 2023) SPAN 301. Introduction to Literature and Film, TTh, 02:00pm – 03:20pm, THH121
    • (Spring 2023) SPAN 481. Literature and Popular Culture, TTh, 12:30pm – 01:50pm

  • Book Review

    • Belisle, N. L. (2008). Review of Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals, and Fantasies of Conquest. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

    Journal Article

    • Belisle, N. L. (2021). Passing Life, Playing Dead: Zombification as Juridical Shapeshifting in Pedro Cabiya’s Malas hierbas. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. Vol. 30 (1), pp. 25-45.
    • Belisle, N. L. (2021). The Head that Remains. Diacritics. Vol. 49 (2)
    • Belisle, N. L. (2014). Literatura Nullius: The Untranslatability of Eduardo Lalo and the Multirrelation of the Puerto Rican Intellectual. Small Axe: A Journal of Caribbean Criticism. Vol. 18 (2)
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