Latin American literature, language and culture have fascinated Dr. Diana Lee since her high school years. While she was a sophomore in college, she spent a year in Buenos Aires, Argentina, living with a home-stay family. Her first day of class was September 11, 2001. The experience of living abroad when the world changed so suddenly sparked her academic career focused on issues such as postmodern violence, biopolitics, and the urban environment in work by 20th-century and contemporary authors writing in Spanish.

She teaches courses in modern Latin American and Hispanic American literature, and Spanish language, grammar and composition.

Dr. Lee has returned regularly to Argentina, and also has spent time in Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica and Spain. In addition to her fluency in Spanish she reads Portuguese.

Before joining the Hope faculty in 2020, she taught for three years at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and earlier at Pepperdine University and the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.

AREAS OF Expertise

• 20th and 21st century Latin American literature
• Hispanic studies

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., 20th and 21st century Latin American literature, University of California-Riverside, 2015
• M.A., Spanish, University of California-Riverside, 2012
• M.Div., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2008
• B.A., Spanish, international studies, Pepperdine University, 2004

Selected Publications and Presentations

• “Violence and the Urban Environment: An Ecocritical Reading of Morirás lejos by José Emilio Pacheco,” Chasqui, 2019
• “Environmental Apocalypse and Human Nature in Ignacio Padilla’s El año de los gatos amurallados,” presentation at International Conference on Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies, London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, 2020
• “Violencia e inocencia en los cuentos de Carlos Orlando Pardo,” presentation at Conferencia de la literatura tolimense, regional, y colombiana, Ibagué, Colombia, 2019
• “Biopolitics, Bananas, and Buendías: Sovereign Power and Nature in Gabriel García Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude,” presentation at International Conference on Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies, London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, 2019
• “Hippopotami, Humans, and Habitat: Ecological Crisis and Posthuman Subjectivities in Mempo Giardinelli’s Imposible Equilibrio,” in Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America (ed. by M. Anderson et al.), Lexington Books, 2016
• “Colombian Marginalized Literatures,” with V. González-Bohórquez, in A History of Colombian Literature (ed. by R. Williams), Cambridge University Press, 2016

Outside the College

In addition to reading and researching, Dr. Lee enjoys running and completed her first (and only) half marathon in November 2019. She also enjoys going on walks, doing jigsaw puzzles, drinking hot tea, and spending time with family and friends. She has lived in Latin America, Europe and Asia but still thinks her home state of California has the most beautiful places to visit.