RESEARCH INTERESTS
Caribbean literature * Latin(o) American theater and performance studies * migration and citizenship * colonialism and race.
Ph.D. 2000, University of Kansas, Hispanic Literature
M.A. 1994, University of New Mexico, Hispanic Literature
B.A. 1992, Tulane University, Latin American Studies and Spanish
Camilla Stevens holds a joint appointment with the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and is the former director of the Center for Latin American Studies. She specializes in Latin(o) American drama, theater and performance studies, and Caribbean literature. Her research highlights the role of theater in the cultural politics of constructing, defining, and remembering collective identities. Her book Family and Identity in Contemporary Cuban and Puerto Rican Drama offers a comparative analysis of how domestic drama allegorizes divergent views of Cuban and Puerto Rican national experience during the second half of the 20th-century. In Aquí and Allá: Transnational Dominican Theater and Performance, professor Stevens explores how contemporary Dominican theater and performance artists portray a sense of collective belonging shaped by the transnational connections between the homeland and the diaspora. She has also co-edited a two-volume collection of Latin American women playwrights and currently serves on the editorial board of the Latin American Theatre Review.
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
- 2019. Aquí and Allá: Transnational Dominican Theater and Performance (University Press of Pittsburgh). https://www.upress.pitt.edu/authors/camilla-stevens/
- 2016. Escrito por mujeres. (1951-2010). Vol II. Co-edited anthology of Latin American Women Playwrights. Latin American Theater Today Books (with May Summer Farnsworth and Brenda Werth).
- 2013. Escrito por mujeres. (1911-1942). Vol I. Co-edited critical anthology of Latin American Women Playwrights. Latin American Theater Today Books (with May Summer Farnsworth and Olga Martha Peña Doria).
- 2004. Family and Identity in Contemporary Cuban and Puerto Rican Drama (University Press of Florida).
SELECT ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS
- 2016. “Hispanic Caribbean Theatre on the Move: Crossing Borders, Redefining Boundaries.” Latin American Theatre Review 50.1: 11-27.
- 2014. “Caribbean Drama: A Stage for Cross-Cultural Poetics,” in Re-imagining the Caribbean: Teaching Creole, French, and Spanish Caribbean Literature. Eds. Valérie Orlando and Sandra Cypess. Lexington Books.
- 2013. “‘Get up, Stand up, Stand up for your Rights’”: Transnational Belonging and Rights of Citizenship in Dominican Theater,” in Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-First Century Theater: Global Perspectives. Eds. Florian Becker, Paola Hernandez, and Brenda Werth. Palgrave.
- 2009. “Theater Transformations: Reading Race in Abelardo Estorino's Parece blanca,” in Trans/acting: Latin American and Latino Performing Arts. Eds. Jacqueline Bixler and Laurietz Seda. Bucknell University Press.
- 2007. “Ponernos el espejo por delante: Staging Race in Alejandro Tapia y Rivera’s La cuarterona.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos. 31(2): 231-52.
- 2006. “The Haunted Puerto Rican Stage: Lucy Boscana in Vejigantes and La carreta.” Latin American Theatre Review 38 (1): 5-22. (reprinted in: Revista del Archivo Nacional de Teatro y Cine del Ateneo Puertorriqueño, 2006).
COURSES REGULARLY TAUGHT
595:100 Introduction to Caribbean Studies
595:270 Introduction to Caribbean Literature
595:341 Theater of the Hispanic Caribbean: Migration and Memory
595:342 Post-Colonial Caribbean Theater and Performance (as graduate seminar, 940:659)
940:215 Introducción a la Literatura Hispánica
940:331 Literatura y Cultura del Caribe Hispano (siglos 15-19)
940:332 Literatura y Cultura del Caribe Hispano (siglos 20-21)
940:450 Teatro Hispanoamericano (as graduate seminar, 940:555)