Alejandro Ramírez

Lecturer
Department: Spanish and Portuguese
4317 Rolfe Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1532
Campus mailcode: 951532
aramirezm@ucla.edu
Website
Keywords: Latin America, Literature, Mexico

Alejandro Ramírez Méndez is a specialist in Mexican, Mexican-American and Chicano/a literature and cultures. He completed his Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at UCLA (2018). Prior to starting his doctoral studies, he received a B.A. in Literature and Language Sciences at Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana (Mexico, 2007), and a M.A. in Literary Studies (Literatuurwetenschap) at Leiden University (The Netherlands, 2010).

His research agenda scrutinizes Mexican and Mexican-American urban narratives (literature, graphic novels, public art, and music) that disclose how the sociopolitical conditions of the twentieth century dialogue with the cultural, gender and ethnic circumstances in the current period of global neoliberalism. His book project, Trans-Urban Narratives: Literary Cartographies and Global Cities in the Urban Imagination of Mexico and the US, proposes a method of literary analysis by interconnecting two or more urban environments across the socioeconomic boundaries of Mexico and the U.S., a process that he calls “trans-urbanity.” He suggests that trans-urban narratives, a cultural phenomenon of the twenty-first century, portray the internal reality of immigrant subjects who inhabit mayor global centers from the Third World (Mexico City) and the First World (Los Angeles, Chicago and New York) in the age of neoliberal migratory policies.