My research interests, broadly speaking, are in the politics of the literary and visual arts of Latin America. I have published on narrative, poetry, film, and performance art, focusing geographically on Chile and Mexico and temporally on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing of late on poetry and revolutionary politics in the 1960s and 70s. I am particularly interested in how creative expression from these contexts reflect and critique contemporary structures of power, from the political legacies of authoritarian regimes to the cultural logics that marginalize subjects on the bases of class, race, gender and other markers of difference. Through my analyses, I seek to question and rethink the relationships between art and agency, literacy and the public sphere.
Selected Publications
“Los primeros sabores de Cecilia Vicuña.” Vicuñana: el arte y la poesía de Cecilia Vicuña, un diálogo sur/norte. Ed. Meredith Clark. Santiago: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 2015. 35-64. Print and e-book.
“‘Latin America is Sown with the Bones of the These Forgotten Youth’: Revolution, Dictatorship, and Roberto Bolaño.” Historical Context Essay. Critical Insights: Roberto Bolaño. Ed. Ignacio Lopez-Calvo. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2015. 33-49. Print and e-book.
“La historia precaria de un manuscrito tenaz: de Sabor a mí a El Zen Surado.” Introduction and notes to El zen surado: 1966-1972 by Cecilia Vicuña. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Catalonia, 2013. Print.
Translation and Annotation: “Escrituras al seco, ladino-americas, & other paleonasms: entreview with/con Andrés Ajens.” Interview by Kent Johnson. Translated, Edited, and with Notes & Commentary by Kristin Dykstra and Juliet Lynd. Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion 6 (Fall 2013). 297-321. Print.
Also online (among selected pieces available without a subscription): http://www.lanaturnerjournal.com/contents-current/andres-ajens-kent-johnson-entreview
“El problema del duelo y el futuro de las literaturas nacionales: el caso de Roberto Bolaño.” Estar en el presente: literatura y nación desde el Bicentenario. Eds. Enrique Cortez and Gwen Kirkpatrick. Lima-Berkeley: Latinoamérica Editores, 2012. 363-386. Print.
Also published in Actas del XXXVIII Congreso del Instituto Internacional de Literatura Latinoamericana. Eds. Enrique Cortez and Gwen Kirkpatrick. E-book. http://www.iiligeorgetown2010.com/2/pdf/Lynd.pdf. Online.
“Seductive Narratives: On Human Rights, Bestsellers, and Hope.” Hispanic Issues Online Debates: Exiles, Intellectuals, and the Memory Wars. Eds. Luis Martín-Estudillo and Megan Corbin. 2012. 25-32. http://hispanicissues.umn.edu/ExilesIntellectualsandtheMemoryWars.html. Web.
“The Politics of Performance and the Performance of Narrative in Roberto Bolaño’s Estrella distante.” Chasqui: Revista de literatura latinoamericana 40.1. May 2011. 170-188. Print.
“Reflections on a Conversation with Ana María Jiménez, Wife of Ángel Escobar.” Included in a dossier on Ángel Escobar (with translations of his poetry by Kristin Dykstra and an essay by Efraín Rodríguez, also translated by Dykstra). Sirena: poesía, arte y crítica 2010: 2. 126-136. Print.
“‘Hondo es el pozo del tiempo’: Memory and Violence in Raúl Zurita’s Las ciudades de agua (2007).” Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas/Nueva escritura de las Américas 13 (2010): 405-420. Print.
“Writing from the Margins of the Chilean Miracle: Diamela Eltit and the Aesthetics and Politics of the Transition.” Post-Authoritarian Culture: Spain and Latin America’s Southern Cone. Eds. Luis Martín Estudillo and Roberto Ampuero. Hispanic Issues. Vanderbilt UP, 2008. 12-33. Invited submission. Print.
“Memoria y el obstinado problema de la complicidad: estéticas, políticas y Hernán Vidal.” Ideologías y literatura: Homenaje a Hernán Vidal. Eds. Javier Campos and Mabel Moraña. Serie Crítica. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2006. 315-345. Invited. Print.
“Precarious Resistance: Weaving Opposition in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña.” PMLA 120.5 (October 2005): 1588-1607. Winner of the Florence Howe Award (2006). Print.
“Las edades de Lulú: ¿feminismo, pornografía o novela rosa?” Coauthored with Carmen Moreno-Nuño. Lead article. España Contemporánea: Revista de Literatura y Cultura 15.1 (Spring 2002): 7-30. Print.
“Happy Sadist or Latent Feminist?: Un Buñuel Mexicain.” Coauthored with Caryn Connelly. Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 21 (2002): 233-249. Print.
“Virgins, Brides and Devils in Disguise: Buñuel Does Mexican Melodrama.” Coauthored with Caryn Connelly. Lead article. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 18.3 (August 2001): 235-56. Print.
“Art and Politics in Paul Leduc’s Frida: naturaleza viva.” Romance Languages Annual 10 (1998): 696-702. Print.
“The Voice of the Other in Alejo Carpentier’s Baroque World: The Challenge to Authoritarian Discourse in El reino de este mundo and Los pasos perdidos.” Romance Languages Annual 9 (1997): 593-99. Print.