Elena Deanda-Comacho

Candidate statement

I am a Professor of Spanish and Black Studies at Washington College, where I teach Spanish and early modern literature. I specialize in 18th-century pornographic literature in Europe and the Americas, and my 2022 monograph entitled Offensive to Pious Ears, just won the 2023 Prize to the Best Monograph given by the Spanish Society of 18th-Century Studies and the 2023 Prize for the Best Monograph given by the Association for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. I am the exiting president of IASECS or the Ibero American Society of 18th Century Studies, and the current LASA (Latin American Studies Association) Mexico Section co-chair. In 2023 I became the recipient of a Fulbright Global Scholar Award to collaborate with the universities of Bonn in Germany, Oviedo in Spain, and UNAM in Mexico.
As a Mexican-American female professor at a small liberal arts college, my commitment lies with the empowerment of women, immigrants, and Afro-descendants. As for women, I recently co-edited a volume on women and capital reuniting women scholars from various institutions, nations, and fields on the topic of analyzing the role of women in acquiring and administrating capital. As for Latin American scholars, I manage the LASA Mexico Section, and as the Latinx Students advisor, I actively seek to cultivate a strong presence of Spanish speaking and Hispanic heritage students in the higher-ed system. With regards to the Black experience, as the Black Studies program director, I have worked in my college and outside to advance the most pressing issues of our African American students and of the Black Studies field with online seminars and lecturerships.
Having been a representative in other professional associations, I envision my role as one that advocates for issues that do not seem necessarily self evident, like the need for organizational policies and funding to alleviate the extra pressures women have on the profession (daycare issues for conferences, mentoring), the need to take a clear stand against the precarization of our profession by envisaging alternative career paths through mentoring and coaching; the need to bring to the table as decision makers a new and more diverse cohort of leaders who bring innovative ideas to our association, but more importantly, in a moment with high degrees of radicalization, eskepticism, and social fracture, the need to empower 18th academics to reclaim the public sphere by purposefully becoming public scholars who, with their expertise, can impact the larger mediatic society, be it through outreach, civic engagement. or media interventions. I hope that my ideas contribute to our association.