Maja Horn

Maja Horn is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Latin American Cultures at Barnard College. Beforehand she was a research associate at FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where she developed and taught a performance studies concentration (2005-2006). Her research focuses on Hispanophone Caribbean cultures with an emphasis on literature, visual and performance art, gender and sexuality studies, and political culture. Her book, Masculinity after Trujillo: The Politics of Gender in Dominican Literature (Florida UP, 2014), foregrounds the impact of U.S. imperialism on dominant notions of Dominican masculinity and their reinterpretation by pivotal Dominican writers, including Hilma Contreras, Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, Rita Indiana Hernández, and Junot Díaz. She is the editor of a special dossier for Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism dedicated to the memory of José E. Muñoz (2015) and of a special dossier on "Critical Currents in Dominican Gender and Sexuality Studies" (2018).

Maja recently completed a second monograph tentatively titled Queer Dominican Genealogies: Same-Sex Desire in Dominican Literature and Culture. She is currently developing a new research project tentatively titled, “Beyond Independence and Inclusion: Disability Narratives in the Americas, a Critical South-North Dialogue,” that asks what other normative goals and aspirations must be included alongside “independence/autonomy” and “inclusion/accessibility” in disability advocacy and studies? She explores this question through a critical and comparative analysis of disability narratives from both North and South America, with a particular focus on personal narratives from people with disabilities and/or their caretakers.