Miguel Cabañas

B457 Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824

FacultyRomance and Classical StudiesGlobal Studies in Arts and Humanities

Associate Professor
Spanish

Biography

Miguel A. Cabañas is Associate Professor of Latin American and Chicano/Latino Studies at Michigan State University. He is the author of The Cultural “Other” in Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives: How the United States and Latin America Described Each Other (Edwin Mellen Press, 2008). He is edited a special volume of Latin American Perspectives entitled “Imagined Narcoscapes: Narco-Culture, and the Politics of Representation” (March 2014). He has also edited with Gary Totten, Jeanne Dubino, Veronica Salles Reese, Politics, Identity, and Mobility in Travel Writing. New York: Routledge, 2015.

His present research project is a monograph that deals with the global War on Drugs and urban violence in Mexico, Colombia, and the United States. His research focuses on travel literature, Latin American and North American literatures and cultures, with a special emphasis in popular culture (film, music, telenovelas, comics). In 2008-2009, he was Co-Director of Peace and Justice Studies at MSU. He is core-faculty of Chicano/Latino Studies (CLS) and Global Studies in the Arts and the Humanities (GSAH), and the Center for Caribbean and Latin American Studies at Michigan State University. He has been a visiting researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City and at the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia. He also has taught in the Literature Master program at the Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa (UAS) and was affiliated faculty to the Masters Program, Investigación de Estudios Culturales, Universidad EAFIT, Medellín, Colombia (2007- 2010). Miguel was the graduate adviser for Spanish (2012-2014 and 2019-2020) in the department of Romance and Classical Studies. Currently he is the faculty advisor to the MSU Study Abroad program in Valencia, Spain (Fall 2018-present). He serves as Associate Chair of the Romance and Classical Studies program (2016-2017; 2019-present). He is the organizer of the 2018 Symposium Migration studies and the Humanist Perspective (http://migrations.web.cal.msu.edu). He has worked with the group that organizes the MSU Latinx Film Festival https://msulatinxfilmfestival.com.

Degree: Ph.D. in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Connecticut

Research Interest: Violence and Drug trafficking (The War on Drugs in Colombia, Mexico, and the United States); Travel literature; Popular Culture (music, telenovelas, comics); Latin American Literature and Culture; Chicano/Latino Studies; World Literature; Globalization and Diasporas; Cultural Studies; Film; Literary Theory; 19th-Century Short Fiction

Miguel’s Hobbies:

Miguel enjoys playing soccer, running, and biking.

Miguel is also an accomplished musician and a singer. He has performed with different vocal groups such as El Coro Universitario de Salamanca, Colby 8 in Colby College, and the Arts Chorale of Greater Lansing. He plays the guitar and sings in the Lansing local band named Cuatro Sur. This band has performed in the Lansing area and plays Rumba Flamenca and Latin music (son, cumbia, etc).

Projects

Afecto y emociones en Pájaros de verano: De la felicidad a lo abyecto

Cabañas, Miguel A. “Afecto y emociones en Pájaros de verano: De la felicidad a lo abyecto” Proyecto de Investigación Fondecyt Regular 2015 Nº 1150484, Eds. Danilo Sánchez López, Ingrid Urgelles Latorre, and Ainhoa Vásquez Mejias, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. (Forthcoming 2020)

La guerra de las drogas en la pantalla chica: La narcotelenovela o la violencia que nos visita a diario

Cabañas, Miguel A. “La guerra de las drogas en la pantalla chica: La narcotelenovela o la violencia que nos visita a diario.” Desafios às televisões na América Latina: política, comunicação pública e inovação. (accepted in a book in press with Universidad Nacional de Colombia).

Cabañas, Miguel A. “A Trauma’s History: Pablo Escobar as Ghostly Myth and the Neoliberal Social Contract.” Cuadernos de Estudios Hispánicos Vol. 53 No. 1 (March 2019), 165-185.

Cabañas, Miguel A. and Russell Lucas, “Meeting New Challenges in Literature and Culture in the World Grant University.” ADFL Bulletin Vol. 45 No. 1 (2018)/ADE Bulletin 156 (2018), pp. 122-138.

Cabañas, Miguel A. “Lost in Translation? La adaptación al cine de El amor en los tiempos del cólera de Gabriel García Márquez” Tropelías: Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada Vol. 29 (2018), pp. 293-307. Online.

Cabañas, Miguel A. “Messico, Stati Uniti e la Guerra alle droghe: il neoliberalism e la necropolítica a dura prova.” Carmen Boullosa/Mike Wallace. Narcos del Norte. Rosenberg & Sellier, 2017, pp. 211-249.

Cabañas, Miguel A. “Tijuana y Los Angeles: La fronterización de la identidad chicana/latina.” Esther Álvarez López, ed. Cityscapes: Urban and Human Cartographies. Biblioteca Benjamin Franklin, Alcalá de Henares, 2016, pp. 97-105.

Cabañas, Miguel A. et al. “Introduction: Politics, Identity, and Mobility in Travel Writing.” New York: Routledge, 2016.

Cabañas, Miguel A. “Traveling Lies: Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia and Adrián Giménez Hutton’s La Patagonia De Chatwin.” Politics, Identity, and Mobility in Travel Writing, edited by Miguel A. Cabañas, Jeanne Dubino, Veronica Salles Reese, and Gary Totten.

Routledge, 2016.

“Introduction: Imagined Narcoscapes: Narco-Culture, and the Politics of Representation” Latin American Perspectives 195: 41. 2 (March 2014): 3-17. Print.

“Globalization and Other Acts of Violence: Power and Death in the Mexican-Sinaloan Novel.” Voices of Mexico 97 (Autumn-Winter 2013-2014): 33-37. Print.

“Narcotelenovelas, Gender, and Globalization in Sin tetas no hay paraíso” Latin American Perspectives 184, 39:3 (May 2012): 74-87. Print.

“Los viajeros mexicanos contemporáneos y sus intervenciones políticas en el paisaje neoliberal: Juan Villoro y Luis Arturo Ramos” Lejana: Revista Crítica de Narrativa Breve 5 (2012): 1-9. Print.

“El narcocorrido global y las identidades transnacionales.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 42 (2008): 519-542.

“Lo popular transnacional: el narcocorrido como género musical en los Estados Unidos, México y Colombia.” Intersecciones: Abordajes de lo popular en América Latina. Zulema Moret, ed. La Página 74-75 (2008): 89-101.

“Putting the World in Order: John Lloyd Stephens’s Narration of America.” Norteamérica: Revista Académica 1.2 (July-December 2006): 11-38.

“North of Eden: Romance and Conquest in Fanny Calderón de la Barca’s Life in Mexico” Studies in Travel Writing 9 (2005): 1-19.

“Subjectivity and Empire: Representations of Historiography in Ricardo Palma’s Tradiciones Peruanas.” Ciberletras: Revista de crítica literaria y de cultura 12 (January 2005). Online.

“Espacios democráticos y regeneración hispanoamericana en las Escenas norteamericanas de José Martí”

“Espacios democráticos y regeneración hispanoamericana en las Escenas
norteamericanas de José Martí” Genealogías Imaginarias: Discursos de la cultura de hoy. Eds. Javier Durán and Rosaura Hernández Monroy, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México, 2003. 375-383. “El sicario en su alegoría: La ficcionalización de la violencia en la novela colombiana de finales del siglo XX” Taller de Letras 31 (2002): 7-20.