Merging Disciplines, Cultures and Languages
Foreign Language
Lucía M. Suárez
Title: Assistant Professor, Spanish, University of Michigan
Education: Ph.D., The Program in Literature, Duke University; B.A., Interdisciplinary Honors Program, Hunter College
Age: 41
Dr. Lucía M. Suárez is modest about her success in academia. When asked about the journey that has led her to her current position as an assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Michigan, she replies simply, “It has all fallen into place.”
Many students earning doctorates in literature can struggle for years to find the right academic position. But Suárez had three job offers before she had finished her degree in 1999.
She decided on Michigan, she says, because of practical reasons. She hadn’t finished her dissertation and wanted an environment that would be conducive to completing her work. But Suárez certainly hasn’t just breezed through the academic process, as a look at her curriculum vitae reveals. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Hunter College. She was also awarded a Duke Endowment Fellowship, the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and earned certifications in women’s studies and Latin American studies. Suárez has received fellowships and grants to conduct research in Cuba, France, Brazil, Guadeloupe, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. She also speaks four languages: Spanish, English, French and Portuguese, and she can read Kréyol, the language of Haiti.
Suárez’s scholarship is just as ambitious. She’s currently taking on the complex ideas of memory, trauma and identity in the literature of the Caribbean Diaspora. In her forthcoming book, The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian and Dominican Diaspora Memory, she looks at the intersections between memory and human rights issues and marks literature as a site for exposing psychological pain and past violence, and as a location for healing, understanding and, interestingly, socio-political action.
