Adriana Méndez Rodenas

Adriana Méndez Rodenas is an expert in Caribbean and Latin American literature and culture. A PhD in Romance Studies from Cornell University, she is Professor Emerita of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa. She directed the Afro-Romance Institute at the University of Missouri, where she is now Professor Emerita.

Her research and writing on the nineteenth-century Caribbean explores Spanish colonialism, the rise of anti-slavery narrative, and the emergence of national identities. Born in Havana, she has published amply on women writers who cross linguistic and national borders, as in her signature book, Gender and Nationalism in Colonial Cuba—The Travels of Santa Cruz y Montalvo, Condesa de Merlin, and her essay on Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, the first anti-slavery writer in the Americas, published in The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature.

Adriana’s love of travel sparked her interest in the genre of travel writing. Her book, Transatlantic Travels to Nineteenth-Century Latin America: European Women Pilgrims resurrects the stories of women adventurers who crossed the Atlantic during the turbulent period leading to Spanish American Independence. Adriana’s research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Fulbright Distinguished Professorship at Uppsala University, Notre Dame’s Institute for Advanced Study, and the Huntington Library.

Now she turns her love of travel to lecturing for a wider audience. Her topics include the legacy left behind by the colonial histories of Spain and Portugal. She has lectured on Panamá’s early colonial history as well as on the men and women who made the Panamá Canal. Bridging archival research with visual and literary culture, her lectures aim to bring the places visited come alive for her fellow travelers.

Language spoken: English