People

Faculty Profiles

  • Evelyn Soto
  • Evelyn Soto
  • ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
  • Office: Murray Hall, Room 013, College Ave Campus
  • Office Hours:

    AY 26-27 Research Leave
  • Primary Areas of Specialization: Latina/o/x literature C19 - present, Literatures of the Americas, translation studies, hemispheric studies, archival theories & methods
  • Field of Interest: Gender & Sexuality, Hemispheric, Latina/o/x, Nineteenth-Century American, Translation
  • About:

    Evelyn Soto’s research and teaching works across the fields of Latina/o/x literary and cultural studies, hemispheric literary studies, and transnational histories of race. She is currently at work on a first book manuscript titled Black Legend Revolutions: Forming Early Latinx Political Imaginaries. This project situates Latinx political pasts within a new literary and cultural geography: of densely interconnected revolutionary movements across the Caribbean, continental South America, and US during and beyond the historical uprisings of 1808-1826. By close reading an interdisciplinary and multilingual range of literary, legal, and historical texts, the book assembles an archive of early Latinx political imaginaries that contest enduring narratives of US exceptionalism and myths of “mixed” racial democracy in Latin American nationalisms.

    Professor Soto’s research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Sciences Research Council, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chiricú Journal, Latinx Literature in Transition, Latina Histories and Cultures, and Pasados Journal, among others. She currently serves on the MLA forum executive committee for Race & Ethnicity Studies. 
  • Awards:
  • Other Publications:

    Articles and Book Chapters

    • "Passing Time: Latinx Racialization, Modernist Satire, and the Captivity Narrative." eds. John Alba Cutler and Marissa K. López, Latinx Literature in Transition, 1848--1992. Cambridge University Press; 2025:178-194.
    • "The Right to Escape in We Are Not from Here." Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, vol. 9 no. 1, 2024, p. 16-34. 
    • "Translating the Tapada's Veil in Who Would Have Thought It?" in Latina Histories and Cultures: Feminist Readings and Recoveries of Archival Knowledge, eds. Montse Feu and Yolanda Padilla. Arte Público Press, 2023. p. 23-41. 

    Special Issue

    • Co-editor with Jesse Alemán. Against the Past / Contra Pasados, special issue of Pasados Journal. Co-author of the introduction. Forthcoming. 

    Reviews and Other Publications:

    • "Provocation #4, Keyword: 'Legacy.'" Latinx Revolutionary Horizons and  Expanding the Latinx Studies Field Imaginary. ASAP Review/Provocations. Ed. David J. Vázquez. 2025. 
    • Review of Hispanicism and Early US Literature: Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and the Origins of US National Identity, by John C. Havard. Intertexts, vol. 26 no. 1, 2022, p. 146-149.
    • Review of An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States, by Lauren F. Klein. Early American Literature, vol. 57 no. 1, 2022, p. 292-297. 
  • Education: PhD, University of Pennsylvania | MA, University of Pennsylvania | BA, summa cum laude, Cornell University