Alejandro Beas-Murillo

Alejandro Beas-Murillo (he/him) is a doctoral candidate in the English department at UMass Amherst. His dissertation, This Is What Beauty Is: Afro-Caribbean Women's Sovereignty, explores performances and embodiments of creative, intellectual, spiritual, and bodily sovereignty in the work of Dionne Brand, Erna Brodber, Maryse Condé, Évelyne Trouillot, Mayra Santos-Febres, and Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa. Alejandro's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, Centro PR's RicanWritings, and Wasafiri. Most recently, he presented his work at the West Indian Literature Conference in October.

Alejandro has been a teacher for more than a decade. Before coming to the United States, he taught English as a Second or Foreign Language in Spain. He has also taught at Williams College and worked as a faculty member and mentor in the Writing department at Thrive Scholars. At UMass, he has been the instructor of record for introductory and advanced courses on Caribbean, American, Women's & Gender, Latin American, and Film Studies.

He owes everything he has to his maternal grandparents, Genoveva and Pepe.