Profile

María Alejandra is a doctoral student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She holds a BA in Literature from Universidad de los Andes, an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia University, and an MA in Hispanic Studies from the University of Illinois Chicago. Her research explores religious conversion processes and issues of belonging in Early Modern Iberia. Working at the intersection between religion, race and gender, she seeks to assess the consequences of the crossing of identity boundaries for the Muslim community in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain. Other research interests include aljamiado literature, minority languages of the Iberian Peninsula, translation studies, theories of the body and subaltern studies. 

María Alejandra is also a writer, translator, and editor. She was fiction editor of the Columbia Journal, online editor of Revista Arcadia and author of essays and book reviews in magazines such as La Silla Vacía, Revista Semana and Revista Arcadia.