Kaufman Hall 225 B
Profile:
Tess Renker earned a PhD in Hispanic Studies at Brown University in 2022. She joined the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics at the University of Oklahoma in August 2023. Previously, she served as Visiting Asssistant Professor of Spanish at Washington and Lee University. Prior to completing her graduate studies, she was a Princeton in Latin America Fellow in Quito, Ecuador with the Centro Integral de la Niñez y Adolescencia (CENIT).
Professor Renker’s research primarily considers 20th and 21st century Latin American literature, film, and cultural production, with a specific focus on the Andes. Her most recent projects examine questions of political violence, migration, indigeneity, rurality, and structural inequities as articulated through Peruvian literature, film, and photography. She also works to make connections across national and regional contexts, particularly between Peru and Mexico. Professor Renker has two book-length manuscripts in progress. The first, Undoing the Conflict Canon: Author(ity), Circulation, and Peru’s Internal Armed Conflict, examines literary production by women, rural subjects, Indigenous Peruvians, and former combatants that contests hegemonic renderings of Peru’s Internal Armed Conflict. The project questions normative practices of producing and circulating “memory work” across Peru, arguing that the featured authors and publishing houses provide innovative, anti-racist ways forward. Her second manuscript in progress, Radical Borders: Race, Extractive Capitalism, and Peruvian Borderlands, explores the possibility of applying Border Theory to the Peruvian context, interrogating the various borders and bordering regimes that contribute to contemporary inequities. Moving from the early twentieth century to the present, the project considers a variety of mediums, among them literature, film, protest, and rap.
At OU, Professor Renker regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on modern and contemporary Latin American literature and film.
Selected Publications
Whiteness, Coloniality, and Restorative Justice in Claudia Llosa’s La teta asustada (2009).” Hispanic Review, Forthcoming, 2024.
“Chronicle Logic and Human Rights Discourse in the Migration Non-Fiction of Francisco Cantú and Óscar Martínez.” Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, Forthcoming, 2023.
“Rethinking Peruvian ‘Borderlands’ through Grupo Chaski’s Gregorio (1982).” Modern Language Notes, Forthcoming, 2023.
“Looking Elsewhere: Editorial Amartí’s (Re)presentation of post/Conflict Ayacucho.” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of Luso-Hispanic World, vol. 10, no, 2, 2023. pp. 128-150.
“An Arguedean Revolution on the US/Mexico Border: José María Arguedas’s El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo and Yuri Herrera’s Señales que precederán al fin del mundo.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 2022. Volume 26, 2022, pp. 101-122.
“The ‘Generation After’ Talks Back: Contestations of Postmemory in Recent Latin American Literature.” Chasqui, vol. 51, no. 1, 2022, pp. 113-133.
“The ‘Other Johnny’: Jazz, Race, and Existentialism in Julio Cortázar’s El perseguidor and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.” A Contracorriente: una revista de estudios latinoamericanos, vol. 19, no. 3, 2022, pp. 212-235.
Education
PhD in Hispanic Studies. Brown University. 2022.
MA in Hispanic Studies. Brown University. 2020.
MA in Spanish. University of New Hampshire. 2016.
BA in Spanish. University of New Hampshire. 2014.
Teaching Schedule for Fall 2023
SPAN 3853 Introduction to Hispanic Literature and Culture
SPAN 3423 Spanish Grammar in Written Communication
