Meet Anastasia Valecce, Ph.D.

Biography

Anastasia Valecce, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Hispanic cultural studies at Spelman College, where her teaching and scholarship center on Latin American and Caribbean cultures, Afro-Queer aesthetics, visual culture, film, literature, performance, and decolonial practices. Originally from Southern Italy, she has taken her intellectual and personal journey through Italy, Spain, Argentina, Cuba, and Puerto Rico—places that, in different ways, have become homes.

Education

• Ph.D., Spanish (Latin American Studies), Emory University
• M.A., Spanish (Latin American Studies), Emory University
• M.A., Literary Translation and Text Editing, Università degli Studi di Siena (Siena, Italy)
• B.A., Socio-Cultural Studies in Spain and Latin America/Foreign Languages and Literatures (Major in Spanish; Minors in English and Portuguese), Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” (Naples, Italy)

Courses Taught

Every semester, I teach a variety of courses that include any level of Spanish for requirements, minors, and majors, from 201-202 (Intermediate Spanish) to 303-306 (Advanced Conversation and Composition), 351-354 (Content courses with a focus on my scholarship material), and 451-454 (Specialized courses on first-hand material and scholarship on my area of study and research).

Some examples:

1. SPA 353: Through the QUEER Lens: New Perspectives on LATINX AMERICAN CINEMA
2. SPA 354: Music and Politics in the Hispanophone Caribbean: Writing, Language, and Socio- Political Activism
3. SPA 453: Artistic Expressions in the Hispanic Caribbean
4. SPA 453: Bad Girls Go Anywhere: Artistic Expressions of Queer Puerto Rican Women
5. SPA 451: Caribbean Visual Femininities

Research Interests

Valecce’s research focuses on the cultural, literary, and artistic production of the Spanish Caribbean and Latin America, with particular emphasis on Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Her work specializes in film, visual arts, literature, and performance studies through the lenses of queer and gender theory and frameworks grounded in race, decolonial thought, and cultural studies.

Select Publications

Her book titled "Neorrealismo y cine en Cuba: historia y discurso entorno a la primera polémica de la revolución (1951-1962)" [Neorealism and Cinema in Cuba: History and Discourse on the First Polemic of the Revolution (1951-1962)] examines the aesthetic history, the relations, and the polemics around the revolutionary Cuban film production, its transnational contacts, and retraces the dynamics behind the formation of the revolutionary ideology in Cuba. This book is forthcoming with Purdue University Press.

Her latest works include an article on murals and urban space in Puerto Rico published by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (2017), an article on a short queer Puerto Rican documentary published by CENTRO Journal (2018), and a forthcoming article on the internet, control, and digital conflict in Cuba with University of Florida Press.