About
Elena Machado Sáez is a
Professor of English at Bucknell University, where she teaches courses on contemporary American, US Latino/a, and Caribbean diaspora literatures. She earned her PhD in English at SUNY Stony Brook and her undergraduate degree in English at Fordham University.
Dr. Machado Sáez recently completed
an essay offering an MFA teleology for US Latinx literature,
two essays on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musicals,
In the Heights and
Hamilton, and
an article comparing Miranda’s self-representation and modes of affiliation on Twitter to that of other Latinx writers.
She is author of
Market Aesthetics: The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction (University of Virginia Press 2015). The book analyzes historical fiction by Caribbean diasporic authors in Britain, Canada and the United States as part of a global literary trend that addresses the relationship between ethnic writers and their audiences. Machado Sáez argues that the novels address the problematic of intimacy and ethics in relation to readership by focusing on how gender and sexuality represent sites of contestation in the formulation of Caribbean identity and history.
Dr. Machado Sáez is also coauthor of
The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature (Palgrave Macmillan 2007), which discusses how Cuban-American, Dominican-American, and Puerto Rican literatures challenge established ideas about the relationship between politics and the market.
Publications
Monograph
Machado Sáez, Elena.
Market Aesthetics: The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction. New World Studies Series, Modern Language Initiative. University of Virginia Press, 2015.
Discusses the historical novels of Robert Antoni, Julia Alvarez, Dionne Brand, David Chariandy, Michelle Cliff, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Marlon James, Andrea Levy, Ana Menéndez, and Monique Roffey.
Coauthored Book
Dalleo, Raphael and Machado Sáez, Elena.
The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Analyzes the relationship of politics and the market in the works of Chantel Acevedo, Julia Alvarez, Angie Cruz, Nilo Cruz, Junot Díaz, Cristina Garcia, Ana Menéndez, Pedro Pietri, Ernesto Quiñonez and Abraham Rodriguez. Paperback version issued in January 2013.
Upcoming Talks and Conferences
“Nilo Cruz’s Sibling Rivalries: Imagining Politics and Sexuality during Cuba’s Special Period.”
- Latin American Theater Today Festival and Symposium, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies; University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS; [2020.]
“Debt of Gratitude: Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Politics of US Latinx Twitter.”
- American Society for Theater Research Conference; Arlington, VA; 2019.
“Bodega Sold Dreams: Middle-Class Panic and the Cross-over Aesthetics of In the Heights.”
- 4th Biennial Latina/o Literature Conference; CUNY John Jay; 2019.
“Conscripts of Neoliberalism: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Twitter Activism.”
- “Digitizing Race: Making Latinxs in the 21st Century” Conference; New York University; 2019.
- Bucknell Digital Scholarship Conference; 2018.
