Juan Carlos González Espitia
Professor of Spanish
Dey Hall 328
(919) 962-1024
jcge@email.unc.edu
Juan Carlos Gonzalez-Espitia is a scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American literature. He has continuously taught courses and guided work in both time periods, inspiring and being inspired by his students. His research focuses on non-canonical, heterodox, shunned and hidden literature, ideas, and authors that, although excluded, reveal very profound trends in culture and society. His research treats representations of disease, literature that challenges the status quo, and nation-building—in particular the complex, dynamic transformation from a colonial condition to one of budding independence. He is especially interested in the relationships between disease and nation in literature, and in finding divergent, innovative, profound, and fertile critical approaches to texts. Gonzalez-Espitia is also the editor of Hispanófila, a long-standing journal of Hispanic studies published since 1957.
