Author Profiles

Dr. Damaris Puñales–Alpízar is Professor of Hispanic Studies, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Director of the International Studies program, and the Executive Sponsor of Alianza Latina/Latin Alliance at Case Western Reserve University. She studied Journalism at the University of Havana and has worked as a journalist in Cuba, Belize, and Mexico. In Belize, she founded Conexión, the first bilingual and trans-border newspaper, and in Mexico, she was a correspondent for regional and national mass media outlets. She directs two study abroad programs at CWRU in Spain.

Her scholarly publications include the books La Maldita Circunstancia, Ensayos Sobre Literatura Cubana (2020) and Escrito en Cirílico: El Ideal Soviético en la Cultura Cubana Posnoventa (2012). Her next book is coming out by the National Autonomous University of Mexico with the title Códigos Rojos: Geopolíticas de la Traducción Durante la Guerra Fría, Cuba y el Bloque del Este. She has edited the volumes Asedios al Caimán Letrado: Literatura y Poder en la Revolución Cubana (with Emilio J. Gallardo Saborido and Jesús Gómez de Tejada, 2018) and El Atlántico Como Frontera: Mediaciones Culturales Entre Cuba y España (2014). She has coordinated the special dossiers “Cuba: A Cultural Prospection,” for the academic journal Cuadernos del Sur–Letras, (National University of the South, Argentina, 2021), and “Cuba: The Soviet Flavor of a Tropical Island. A Visit 20 Years Later,” for La Habana Elegante: Revista Semestral de Literatura y Cultura Cubana, Caribeña, Latinoamericana, y de Estética No. 51 (Spring-Summer 2012). Her scholarly articles have appeared in leading journals in the United States, Cuba, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Slovenia, Argentina, Canada, Peru, France and Spain, such as Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Caribbean Studies, Revista Iberoamericana, La Habana Elegante, Kamchatka, Vallejo&Co, Revista de Letras, Artelogie, Cuadernos del Sur–Letras, Teatro, Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, etc.

In 2021, Dr. Puñales-Alpízar was one of the two faculty awardees at Case Western Reserve University for the Flora Stone Mather Woman of Achievement and Mather Spotlight Award. That same year, she won an Expanding Horizons Initiative Grant to organize the international conference “Translation Practices during the Cold War: A Multidisciplinary Approach.” In 2018, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Russia to complete research for her current scholarly project on the geopolitics of socialist translations. During the 2013-2015 period, Puñales-Alpízar was elected delegate from the Great Lakes region to the Modern Language Association. Regularly, she writes and translates for the Collective Arts Network Journal, CAN, in Cleveland, and publishes op-ed pieces in a Spanish newspaper. She was a Member of the Board of LatinUS Theater Company in Cleveland, and is the founder and president of the non-profit organization Trasatlántica. Poetry and Scholarship (https://trasatlantica.org/). She is also a member of the Editorial Board of the academic journal Caribe.