Author of Américanas, Autocracy and Autobiographical Innovation: Overwriting the Dictator(Routledge, 2020) and Women’s Academic Career Narratives as Autobiography: In the Spaces Provided(Routledge, 2023), Dr. Ortiz-Vilarelle teaches at The College of New Jersey. Her current project, tentatively titled Life’s Work: Personhood and Affiliation in the North American Academy, considers academic career narratives as a genre capable of social justice-centered forms of intellectual fellowship and activism in the academy. Dr. Ortiz-Vilarelle teaches courses in critical theory; 20th and 21st century Multiethnic and Inter-American literature; global women’s writing; autobiographical studies; and Latine literature with specific attention to narratives of colonialism, exile, immigration, and dictatorship throughout the Americas. Editor in Chief for a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, she was 2021-2022 Fulbright Research Chair in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, Canada, and has had Visiting Scholar posts in the Center for Biographical Research at the University of Hawai’i, at Manoa (2018), and in the Departments of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies and English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Edmonton (2020).  

As plenary speaker for SAMLA 98, Dr. Ortiz-Vilarelle exemplifies our mission statement, as her academic interests around inter- and trans-disciplinary study, attention to diversity of perspectives and languages, and particular interest in the academy as potential source for autoethnographical study demonstrate. If, as our mission statement suggests, we are “dedicated to the advancement of teaching and literary and linguistic scholarship in the modern languages,” Dr. Ortiz-Vilarelle’s commitment to the lives and literatures of others makes her an ideal speaker for SAMLA 98: Hospitality.