Diego Bustos, Ph.D.

Diego Bustos studied economics and history at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and graduated from the MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. He holds a Ph.D. in Latin America Literature at the University of New Mexico. In 2003 he won the National Short Story Award “Ciudad de Bogota”. His academic research focuses on the relationship between rhetorical strategies present in a corpus of cultural performances and novels, and the imagination on development and middle-class in Brazil, Colombia and the Mexico-US borderlands. With an emphasis on cultural citizenship and transnational discourses on social inclusion, his scholar work informs his approach to teaching language and culture, and vice versa: both imagined as contested fields in the struggle for liberation. His life on the border has reinforced his interests in these topics and the urgency of their articulation within a broader transnational frame. He has been involved in different projects in the region, from the extinct Revista Coroto, based in El Paso, to the Interdisciplinary Colombian Studies Group, in Albuquerque. Also, he is involved in the Colombian Syllabus, a group project intended to situate critically the current social unrest ongoing in his native country. Currently, he is implementing a methodology of Creative Writing for Social Justice as part of the curriculum in Spanish at the Border Studies Program.

• Ph.D. University of New Mexico
• MFA in Creative Writing, University of Texas at El Paso

• Latin American Studies Association (LASA), 2013-present
• American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA), 2014-present
• Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA), 2016-present
• Modern Language Association (MLA), 2017-present
• Sigma Delta Pi Sociedad Nacional Honoraria Hispánica, 2016-present
• Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericna (IILI), 2017-present
• The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, 2019-present
• Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies (RMCLA), 2019-present
• The Southwest Council of Latin American Studies (SCOLAS), 2019-present
• American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), 2020-present

Twentieth and twenty-first Century Colombian, Brazilian and Mexican Literature. Border and transnational discourses of citizenship, democracy, social mobility, and critical development theory in contemporary and 20th century Latin American literary production.

2020                “Estéticas de la aspiración, políticas de la inclusión: glosas al desarrollo en dos saraus de Rio de Janeiro.” A literatura além do libro, special issue of Estudos de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea, no. 59, 2020, pp. 56-68.

2019                “Apropiarse de la ciudad: los recursos de la memoria en Guia afetivo da perifería, de Marcus Vinícius Faustini.” Literatura y derechos humanos. Nuevas violencias, nuevas resistencias, special issue of Otras Modernidades, 2020, pp. 233-243.

2010                “Un Pueblo en vilo.” Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea 44. 7-11

2004                “Economía e historia: diferenciación disciplinar y el desarrollo como concepto homogenizante.” Cuadernos de trabajo. 4-42

2022                “El trabajo del artista y la creatividad del trabajo en ‘Aguas de Estuario’ y ‘Guia Afetivo da Periferia’, de Veia Vidal y Marcus Vinicius Faustini: Intersecciones neoliberales en Colombia y Brasil.” III Congreso Internacional de Literatura Brasileira (COLIBRA) João Ubaldo Ribeiro, la ficción y la historia, Universidad de Salamanca, December 12 -16

2021                “Unexpected Archives of Development: The Rural Life of the City.” American Comparative Literature Association’s 2021 Annual Meeting, Virtual Conference, April 8-11

2020                “Los archivos del desarrollo: clase media y genealogía hemisférica en Los de

en medio, de Augusto Morales Pino,” 54th anual SCOLAS conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 12-14

2019                “Of Streets, Neighborhoods and Peripheries: Political Circumstance and Economic Imagination in ‘Guia afetivo da periferia’ and ‘La cuadra’, by Marcus Vinícius Faustini and Gilmer Mesa.” Latin American Studies Association, Boston, Massachusetts, May 24-27

2019                “Creative Circumstance and Storytelling in Middle-Class Narratives.” Querencias Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 12-13

2019                “Imagination of Growth and the Challenge of aspiration: Two Takes on Social Mobility in Latin America.” Rocky Mountain Council of Latin American Studies, Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 3-6

2018                “Performing Inclusion, Historizing Development: The Scene of saraus in Contemporary Brazil.” American Portuguese Studies Association, Ann Arbor, Michigan, October 18-20

2018                “The shameless memory of the self: the political circumstance of the periphery in Estação Terminal, by Sacolinha.”  XIV Brazilian Studies Association Congress, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 25-28

2018                “Periferia y clase en La cuadra, de Gilmer Mesa: un diálogo de fronteras.” Congreso Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (IILI), Bogotá, Colombia, June 12-15

2018                “Democracias, derechos y aspiraciones: un mapa cultural de la inclusión en Colombia.” Latin American Studies Association, Barcelona, España, May 23-26

2017                “The memory of the wannabe in Guia afetivo da periferia by Marcus Vinícius Faustini.” IX Annual Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference: Guilty Pleasures and Confessional Spaces: Storytelling and the Digital Dionysus, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 31-April 1

2016                The Memory as a Technology of the Self: The Nostalgic Artifact in Guia afetivo da periferia, by Marcus Vinícius Faustini.” X International Conference of the American Portuguese Studies Association, Stanford, California, October 13-15 2016               “Escolios a un texto explícito: fracturas, ansiedades y fantasías de clase media en Guia afectivo da periferia, de Marcus Vinicius Faustini.” XXXIV International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, New York, May 27-30