Dr. Santiago Acosta

Biography

Santiago Acosta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University, specializing in modern contemporary Latin American literature and visual arts. He adopts lenses from cultural studies, political economy, and environmental theory in his work. His book manuscript, 'Like Oil: Ecology and Venezuelan Culture Boom,' explores the interactions between literature, visual arts, and environmental shifts during the 1970s oil boom in Venezuela. Acosta is also the co-editor of the volume 'Ecopoéticas y políticas ecológicas desde el Sur,' which is currently under contract with Brill Academic Publishers. From 2021 to 2023, he served as a PRODiG Fellow at the State University of New York in Old Westbury, where he contributed to launching a new Environmental Studies degree program. An award-winning poet, Acosta's fourth collection, 'El próximo desierto (The Coming Desert),' received the José Emilio Pacheco Literature Prize at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, alongside recognition from the Museum of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guadalajara. He has participated in the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and was an invited poet at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow. Acosta co-founded the poetry journal El Salmón, which won the National Book Award in 2010.

Research Interests