Director, School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics

Mariselle Meléndez is professor of Colonial Spanish American Literatures and Cultures and LAS Alumni Distinguished Professorial Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is also a former Conrad Humanities Scholar (2011-2016) and recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend (1997). Her research focuses on issues of race and gender in colonial Spanish America with special interest in the eighteenth century, the cultural phenomenon of the Enlightenment, food studies, environmental studies, as well as visual studies. 

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