Eyda M. Merediz

Eyda M. Merediz arrived at the University of Maryland after finishing her doctoral degree at Princeton University and teaching at Union and Smith Colleges. Her academic interests concentrate primarily on the fields of Colonial Latin American Studies and Early Modern Transatlantic Literatures and Cultures.  In addition to several articles and a critical edition, she has published a monograph, Refracted Images: The Canary Islands through a New World Lens (MRTS 2004) that uses the important colonial outpost of the Canary Islands to explore the fluidity of literary and cultural exchanges that prevailed in the Hispanic World of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She has also edited, with Santa Arias, the volume Approaches to Teaching the Writings of Bartolomé de las Casas (MLA 2008). She has also taught and researched on more contemporary Caribbean Studies, in specific Cuban cinema and literature and its trans-national dimension as shown in her edited volume, with Nina Gerassi-Navarro, Otros estudios transatlánticos: lecturas desde lo latinoamericano (IILI, 2009). More recently, she has undertaken a project centered on the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas and the appropriation of his legacy in the Caribbean. Merediz has served as Department Head (2015-2021), SPAP Director of Graduate Studies and Director of the Honors Program, as well as the Undergraduate Advisor for the Certificate on Latin American Studies. She has enriched curricular offerings at all levels in her areas of specialization, especially designing  courses on Latin American Popular Culture mixing visual (Telenovelas) and literary materials. For the Office of International Programs,  Merediz have designed several Study Abroad programs and courses for the winter term in Cuba (2002-03), Seville-Spain (2005-present), and Quito/Cuenca-Ecuador (2009-present), for the summer in Salamanca/Barcelona-Spain (2002-present), and also for the semester program in Seville-Spain (2012-present).