José Antonio Villarán is a PhD Candidate in the Literature program at UC Santa Cruz, and part of the Creative-Critical Concentration in that department with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies. His academic interests bring together Creative Writing, Poetics, Cross-Genre Literature, Translation Studies, US Latinx Literature, Bi-lingual Literature, and Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies. José is a 2019-2020 Humanities Institute (THI) Graduate Student Success Peer Mentor and the recipient of a 2018-2019 THI Summer Research Fellowship.
THI spoke with José 2020 in June to learn more about his research and dissertation work on a “cross-genre literature project,” and breaking down the binary of scholarship and creative work. We also spoke about the strangeness of talking about and carrying on PhD research in this current moment in US history.
You can find José's interview here.
