Author Archives: Kristina I Medina-Vilariño

About Kristina I Medina-Vilariño

Kristina I. Medina-Vilariño is originally from (Ponce) Puerto Rico. She completed a B.A. in Hispanic Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Ponce, Puerto Rico; an M.A.in Spanish at the University of Florida in Gainesville; and a Ph.D. in Spanish at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She also holds minors in Latin American Studies and Latino/a Studies. Through the Foreign Languages Area Studies fellowship she was able to study abroad in Brazil during her doctoral studies, where she also conducted research on contemporary poetry and Afro-Brazilian culture. She also completed a Teaching Scholar Certificate and a Graduate Teacher Certificate with the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois, where she has been included several times in the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent. Professor Medina-Vilariño specializes on Hispanic Caribbean contemporary literatures, film, and cultural studies. Other main areas of her research include Latino/a Studies and Latin American literature and cultures. Her studies emphasize theoretical approaches to transnational film and literatures, migration studies, gender and sexuality, national identity, and racial theory. Her dissertation, Geographies in Transit: Representations of the Dominican Body in Contemporary Film and Literature, examines the literary and cinematic constructions of Dominican bodies in the context of different geographical locations: the Dominican Republic, the United States, Puerto Rico, and Haiti. She argues that the representations of these bodies are marked by issues of race, gender, and migration in which the Dominican body is always perceived in transit from one locality to another. The dissertation also looks at how colonial history and present-day economic structures affect the manner in which the main characters viewed their own bodies in relationship to others within very specific national spaces. She has taught numerous courses in Hispanic Literature, Cultural Studies, Latin American Studies, Spanish for Heritage Speakers, and Spanish language/literature at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. In her most recent courses, Professor Medina-Vilariño has emphasized the construction of national identities in transnational contexts as well as the intersections of historiography, media representations, and economic processes. She has also focused strongly on the silenced voices and histories of Latin America and the United States.