Professor of English · Western Washington University

Lysa
M. Rivera

Illuminating the voices, histories, and literary traditions of Chicanx and African-American experience.

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Chicanx Literature African-American Literature Cultural Studies

About

Scholar.
Educator.
Advocate.

15+
Years of Teaching
2
Core Specializations
WWU
Western Washington University

I am a Professor of English at Western Washington University, where I teach and research at the intersection of Chicanx and African-American literary traditions. My scholarship centers the voices of communities whose stories have been marginalized, misread, or deliberately erased from mainstream literary canons.

My work draws on feminist theory and comparative ethnic studies to examine how writers from these traditions construct identity, resist oppression, and reimagine belonging. I am deeply committed to a pedagogy that makes literature feel urgent, necessary, and alive for all students.

Whether in the classroom or on the page, I bring a rigorous yet accessible approach — one rooted in the belief that literature has the power to transform how we see ourselves and one another.

Chicanx Literature African-American Literature Feminist Studies Border Studies Diaspora & Identity

Portfolio

Selected Work

Journal Article

"Mapping the Borderlands: Space, Body, and Resistance in Contemporary Chicanx Fiction"

An examination of how Chicanx novelists employ spatial metaphor to theorize embodied resistance and cultural hybridity, engaging with the legacy of Gloria Anzaldúa's borderlands theory.

MELUS — Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.

Book Chapter

"Reading Silence: Erasure and Voice in the African-American Gothic"

A comparative study of hauntings — literal and metaphorical — in works by Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead.

Routledge Handbook of African-American Literature

Course

ENGL 340: Voices from the Borderlands

An upper-division course tracing Chicanx literary history from early corridos to contemporary speculative fiction.

Western Washington University

Journal Article

"Writing Freedom: Self-Determination and Form in 20th-Century Black Literature"

Examines how formal experimentation in works by Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Amiri Baraka enacts the political demands of self-determination.

African American Review

Course

ENGL 360: African-American Literary Traditions

A survey of African-American literature from the Harlem Renaissance through contemporary fiction, poetry, and memoir.

Western Washington University

Public Talk

"Story as Survival: Literature and the Politics of Memory"

Keynote address exploring how storytelling communities sustain cultural memory and identity in the face of historical violence.

Pacific Northwest Humanities Conference