Hispanic Studies Faculty Bio

Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert
Professor of Hispanic Studies on the Randolph Distinguished Professor Chair and Director of Africana Studies Program
CH-144 / 845.437.5611 / liparavisini@vassar.edu
B.A., University of Puerto Rico; M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., New York University
Vassar faculty since 1991

Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert is a Professor of Caribbean culture and literature in the Department of Hispanic Studies and the Program in Africana Studies. She is also a participating faculty member in the Programs in American Culture, Latin American Studies, and Environmental Studies. She received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Puerto Rico and an M.A., an M.Phil., and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University. She has been at Vassar since 1991.

Ms. Paravisini-Gebert is the author of a number of books, among them Phyllis Shand Allfrey: A Caribbean Life (1996), Jamaica Kincaid: A Critical Companion (1999), and most recently, Creole Religions of the Caribbean (2003, with Margarite Fernández Olmos) and the forthcoming Literatures of the Caribbean (2004). She is at work on Glimpses of Hell, a study of the aftermath of the 1902 eruption of the Mont Pelée volcano of Martinique, and on José Martí: A Life, a biography of the Cuban patriot.

Ms. Paravisini-Gebert has co-edited a number of collections of essays, most notably Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santería, Obeah, and the Caribbean (1997). Her most recent edited volume, Obsolete Geographies: Displacements and Transformations in Caribbean Cultures, will be published in 2004. Her critical editions of texts by Caribbean women writers include Phyllis Allfrey's The Orchid House (1997) and It Falls Into Place: The Short Stories of Phyllis Shand Allfrey (2004). Her articles and literary translations have appeared in Callaloo, the Journal of West Indian Literature, the Jean Rhys Review, the Journal of Caribbean Literature, Obsidian, and the Revista Mexicana del Caribe, among others.

Among the courses taught most recently by Ms. Paravisini-Gebert are "Environmental Writing in Latin America and the Caribbean," "Literature and Religion in the Caribbean," "Detective Fiction in Latin America," "Popular Culture in Latin America," and "Miami in the American Imagination."

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Professors

• Michael Aronna, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and Chair 2007/08
• Andrew Bush, Professor of Hispanic Studies and Chair 2008/09
• Mario Cesareo, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies
• Mihai Grünfeld, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies
• Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Professor of Hispanic Studies on the Randolph Distinguished Professor Chair and Director of Africana Studies Program
• Nicolas Vivalda, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies
• Eva María Woods, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies