Sebastián Figueroa received his Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. He also holds an MA in Modern Languages from Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, and a BA in Language and Communication from Universidad Austral de Chile.

His dissertation, “Landscapes of Extraction: Capital and Nature in 21st century Latin American Literature and Film,” analyzes the relationship between resource extraction and ecological crisis in a series of novels and documentary films from contemporary Latin America about mining, agribusiness, and manufacture during the first decades of the 21st century.

Dr. Figueroa works on the intersections between class, race, gender, and ecology in Latin American cultural production. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled, Poéticas de la extracción. Literatura, naturaleza y capitalismo en América Latina, in which he analyzes the relationship between capitalist development, resource extraction and ecological crisis in Latin American literature from the 20th and 21st centuries. He has written about extraction and landscape in Patricio Guzmán’s documentary films and monocrop agriculture in Juan Cárdenas’ fiction. He has also written about the poetics of exile in Roberto Bolaño, filmmaker Jaime Barrios, and Brazilian composer Carlos Gomes. Sebastián Figueroa’s research interests range from critical theory, cultural studies, and film theory to environmental humanities.

Dr. Figueroa has taught as a visiting professor at Haverford College, and as adjunct at Universidad Austral de Chile and Universidad de Los Lagos. He received a scholarship from the Government of Chile to pursue graduate studies in Mexico (2008-2011), and the Beca de Creación Literaria (Chile, 2013) for the collection of poetry Dracma (published in 2016 by Serifa, Valdivia). In 2011, he founded Donceles, a bookstore and cultural hub in Valdivia, Chile. He was assistant editor in Revista Austral de Ciencias Sociales and Estudios Filológicos, and book review editor in Hispanic Review.