Juan G. Ramos

Biography

Juan G. Ramos has taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA since 2011. He was born and lived in Guayaquil, Ecuador before moving to New Jersey. At Rutgers-Newark, he completed a BA in English and secondary education, and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst he completed a Master of Arts and PhD in Comparative Literature and a graduate certificate in Latin American Studies.

His book Sensing Decolonial Aesthetics and Latin American Arts (University of Florida Press, 2018) explores the concept of decolonial aesthetics as related to the development of antipoetry, the nueva canción movement, and New Latin American Cinema during the 1960s and early 1970s. He is co-editor of the volume entitled Decolonial Approaches to Latin American Literatures and Cultures (Palgrave, 2016), which brings together renowned Latin Americanists to engage with key concepts related to decolonial theories and thinking while stressing points of contact with literary and cultural texts ranging from the colonial period to the twentieth century, and bringing to the fore new ways in which such theoretical discussions can be fruitful to reanimate specific lines of inquiry in literary and cultural scholarship. He has also published on the connection between poetry and film, film and spectral theory, avant-garde literature in the Andes, as well as the historical crónica during modernismo, early twentieth-century modernist fiction, and twenty-first-century Latin American fiction.

Ramos is finishing a book-length project tentatively entitled "Andean Modernismos: Affective Forms in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru," which studies poetry, fiction, literary criticism, translation, and literary journalism as literary forms that were at once innovative in transforming literary conventions, while producing emotional and affective responses among audiences in their national and international contexts. This book project engages with key scholarship in New Modernist studies, Andean studies, and Affect studies. In support of this project, he was awarded the M.H. Abrams Fellowship at the National Humanities Center (2021-2022) and a Faculty Fellowship from the College of the Holy Cross (Fall 2021). During the 2024-2025 academic year, he was a visiting researcher in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University and a visiting scholar in the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

He is a past chair of the Ecuadorian Studies section of LASA (2018-2020), a past member of the PMLA Advisory Committee (2018-2021), served on the PMLA Editorial Board (2023-2025), and currently serves on the advisory board of Hispanic Review.

News, Research and Publications

https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fellows-of-the-center-1978-2025/juan-g-ramos-nhc-fellow-2021-22/ 

https://magazine.holycross.edu/stories/holy-cross-professors-celebrated-outstanding-scholarship-and-student-advising 

https://magazine.holycross.edu/stories/holy-cross-spanish-professor-receives-fellowship-national-humanities-center 

Select Publications

Books

• Sensing Decolonial Aesthetics in Latin American Arts. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2018. 
• Decolonial Approaches to Latin American Literatures and Cultures. (Co-editor with Tara Daly.) New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Co-edited journal issues

• Affective Modernismos,” for Modernism/modernity, print plus platform, co-edited with Andrew Reynolds (Texas Tech University) (forthcoming, fall 2026).
• “Sara Castro-Klarén y su legado crítico.” MLN, Vol. 137, No. 2, 2022 (co-edited with Leila Gómez and Cristián Opazo)
• “Configuraciones de lo andino.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Vol. 55. No. 3, 2021, co-edited with Jorge Coronado

Peer-reviewed articles

• “El gótico andino en la narrativa de Mónica Ojeda y Solange Rodríguez Pappe". (Special issue of Revista Iberoamericana: “Escritoras latinoamericanas del siglo XXI,” edited by Luciano         Martínez, Vol. LXXXIX, Num. 282-283, (enero-junio 2023): 291-309.
• “Presentación: Sara Castro-Klarén y su legado crítico.” [Introduction to Special Dossier, co-written with Leila Gómez and Cristián Opazo. MLN, Vol. 137. No. 2, (March 2022): 279-289.
• “El boom y el oficio: enseñar en clave autobiográfica.” [journal article, co-authored with Cristián Opazo. MLN, Vol. 137. No. 2 (March 2022): 353-368.
• “Configuraciones de lo andino” (Introduction to Special Dossier, co-authored with Jorge Coronado). Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Vol. 55. No. 3 (October 2021): 497-505.
• “Trans-Andean Modernismos.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Vol. 55. No. 3 (October 2021): 607-632.
• “Sentipensar la sustentabilidad: Decolonialidad y afectos en el pensamiento latinoamericano reciente”.  A Contracorriente: una revista de estudios latinoamericanos. (Special Dossier: A Sustainable Future for Latin America?) Ed. Maria Alessandra Woolson. Vol. 17. No. 2 (2020): 114-127.
• “Utopian Thinking in Verse: Temporality and Poetic Imaginary in the Poetry of Nicanor Parra, Mario Benedetti, and Roque Dalton.” Hispanófila: Ensayos de literatura 178 (2016): 185-203.
•  “Writing Fragments of Modernity: Visual Technology and Metafiction in Pablo Palacio’s Débora and ‘Un hombre muerto a puntapiés’.” Hispania 99.1 (2016): 116-127. 
• “Contesting Domination: Modernity, Coloniality of Gender, and Decolonial Feminism in José de la Cuadra’s ‘La Tigra’.” Romance Notes 55.1 (2015): 61-75.
• “‘No es un fantasma; es un espíritu’: Visual Technology and Spectropoetics in Eliseo Subiela’s No te mueras sin decirme adónde vas.” Letras Hispanas: Revista de literatura y cultura 10.1 (2014): 63-78.
• “Crónica de una muerte pasada: Eloy Alfaro, Vargas Vila y La muerte del cóndor como texto híbrido modernista”. Textos Híbridos: Revista de estudios sobre la crónica latinoamericana 3.1 (2013): 16-42.

Peer-reviewed book chapters

•  “Decolonial Terrains and Affective Ecocritics: José Eustacio Rivera, Demetrio Aguilera Malta, and José de la Cuadra.” Ecologies of Resistance: Arts, Activism, and Transdisciplinary Futures in Latin American and Latinx World. Eds. Ana María Mutis, Elizabeth Pettinaroli, and Ilka Kressner. University of Virginia Press, 2026. 227-254.
• “Resonances of Race in the Global South and the Decolonial Turn.” The Routledge Companion to Literature and the Global South. Eds. Alfred J. López and Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo.Routledge, 2023. 76-86.
• “The Affective Aesthetics of Fictional Objects.” Blackwell Companion to Latin American Literature, 2nd and revised edition. Ed. Sara Castro-Klarén. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022. 714-727.
• “An Ideological Pendulum: South American Literary Interventions in Cold War Politics.” The Palgrave Handbook on Cold War Literature. Ed. Andrew Hammond. New York and London: Palgrave, 2020. 471-488.
• “Comparative Arts, Coloniality, and Decoloniality: Teaching the Afro-Descendant Poetry of Antonio Preciado, Elcina Valencia, and Chocquibtown.” Teaching Contemporary Latin American Poetry. (MLA Series Options for Teaching). Eds. Jill S. Kuhnheim and Melanie Nicholson. New York: Modern Language Association, 2019. 204-219.
• “Rupturas pictóricas decoloniales del paisaje andino: Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco, Eduardo Kingman, Oswaldo Guayasamín”. Visiones de los Andes: Ensayos críticos sobre el concepto de paisaje y región. Eds. Ximena Briceño and Jorge Coronado. La Paz: Plural Editores/University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. 105-131.
• “Who Documents the Migrant? Decolonial Aesthetics, Museo de América, and the Internet Documentary Film.” Telling Migrant Stories: Latin American Diaspora in Documentary Film. Eds.Esteban Loustaunau and Lauren Shaw. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2018. 217-238.
• “Disruptive Capital in Andean/World Literature: A Decolonial Reading of Enrique Gil Gilbert’s Nuestro pan.” Decolonial Approaches to Latin American Literatures and Cultures. Eds. Juan G. Ramos and Tara Daly. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 141-160.
• “Introduction: Decolonial Strategies for Reading and Looking with and against the Grain.” (co-authored with Tara Daly). Decolonial Approaches to Latin American Literatures and Cultures. Eds. Juan G. Ramos and Tara Daly. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Xiii-xxxvi.
• “The Written Verse in Cinematic Verse: Eliseo Subiela’s El lado oscuro del corazón as a Metapoetic Text.” Verse, Voice, Vision: Poetry and the Cinema. Ed. Marlisa Santos. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press/Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. 179-189.