Ylce Irizarry is Associate Professor and Norman and Dorothy Eliason Scholar in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research areas include Chicana/o/x, Latina/o/x, and Hispanic Caribbean Literatures, Narrative, Ecocriticism, Testimonio, and Visual Rhetorics. Irizarry’s work focuses on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of literature: what representations of Latina/o/x experience look like and why authors and artists have made the specific generic, linguistic, and visual choices ultimately appearing in their cultural production. Her monograph Chicana/o and Latina/o Fiction: The New Memory of Latinidad (U of Illinois P, 2016) received the 2018 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Book Award and the 2017 MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies. More recent publications appear in journals including Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, and Symbolism: An International Journal of Critical Aesthetics and these edited volumes: Latinidad at the Crossroads: Insights into Latinx Identity in the 21st Century and Latinx Environmentalisms: Justice, Place, & the Decolonial (2019). Irizarry has received awards for her research, service, and teaching, including the Schwab Academic Excellence Award (UNC, 2024); McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program Award for Outstanding Support of FEF Fellows (2021), and the Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teaching Award (USF, 2017). Outside research and teaching, service to Latinx Studies and underrepresented communities is a personal commitment Irizarry meets as often as possible. She guest lectures on Latina/o/x culture and identity, delivers workshops on diversity, higher education, and professional development for underrepresented students, and was honored to serve on the Executive Council of the Latina/o Studies Association between 2017-2022.
Associate Professor of English
The University of South Florida, Tampa
Discipline: Chicanx and Latinx Literary Studies
Author, Chicana/o and Latina/o Literature: The New Memory of Latinidad (University of Illinois P, 2016).
Winner, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies 2018 Book Award
Winner, 12th MLA Prize in US Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies