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Dr. Romanowski (she/her) is a Latin Americanist with an interdisciplinary background in Political Science and Hispanic literature and Cultural Studies. A consistent factor throughout her research trajectory is its continued engagement with the intimately related themes of human rights and social justice, and, more particularly, with the questions of how they are intertwined with questions of identity and forms of belonging. Her intellectual curiosity centers on the ways in which dominant and peripheral groups have negotiated their coexistence in the same spaces, transcending traditional binary discourses of polar opposition and difference. She has published work engaging with these issues in cultural products from the Caribbean and South America.

She is currently working on a project juxtaposing the different ways in which cultural products engender decolonial perspectives of belonging. She focuses on two groups whose contributions are rather unlikely to be compared, yet are in many ways related: those of US Latin/x migrant backgrounds (in the U.S.) and those of Central and Eastern European migrant background (in Germany).

Courses taught

• The Hispanophone Caribbean (SPN 348)
• Revolt and Change: Protest in Latin American and Latinx Cultural Productions (SPN 347)
• Latin American Literature II (SPN 346)
• Spanish for the Health Professions (SPN 326)
• Spanish language classes (SPN 101, 201, 311, 312, 322)

Research interests

• Migration, identity and belonging
• Race, ethnicity and gender; intersectionality
• Social justice
• Decolonial thought
• Latin American, Caribbean, and Latin/x literature and cultural studies

Selected publications

Refereed Journal Articles

“Decolonial Spaces of Belonging in Chicana and Ukrainian-German Creative Nonfiction.” Forthcoming in Confluencia 39.2, 2023.

“Decolonial Fissures in Dominican Sugarcane Novels: Inclusive Narrative Spaces During the Early Trujillato.” Journal of West Indian Literature 31.1, 2022. 48-121
https://www.jwilonline.org/downloads/vol-31-no-1-november-2022/

“Therapeutic Texts: Anxiety, Eating and Substance Abuse Disorders as Metaphors of Healing in Dominican Fiction.” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies/ Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes. 46.1.1-22. Spring 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/08263663.2021.1855861

“Voices at the Margins of Victimhood: Jorge Díaz’s Náufragos de la memoria.” Skenè: Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies 3.1. Spring 2017. http://www.skenejournal.it/index.php/JTDS/article/view/86

“La convivencia pos-binaria: Zonas del Tercer Espacio en La avalancha: leyenda negra.” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 6.2. Fall 2016. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2db1k81s

“Pintando la distopia contemporánea: rasgos hiperrealistas en Limón Reggae de Anacristina Rossi”. Voces del Caribe: Revista de Estudios Caribeños 5.1. December 2013. http://vocesdelcaribe.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Romanowski.pdf

Book Chapters

Romanowski, Arne, and Hermann Herlinghaus. “Grey Magic and Transatlantic Intoxications: Incursions into the Modernity of Tobacco.” The Pharmakon: Concept Figure, Image of Transgression, Poetic Practice. Ed. Hermann Herlinghaus. Universitätsverlag C Winter Heidelberg, Germany. April 2018.

Book Reviews

Mayes, April J. The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race, and Dominican National Identity. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2014. Revista Iberoamericana LXXXIII.259-60: 676-680. Abril-Septiembre 2017.

Méndez, Danny. Narratives of Migration and Displacement in Dominican Literature. New York: Routledge, 2012. Revista Iberoamericana LXXXI.251: 690-691. Abril-Junio 2015 

Selected presentations

"Border Manifestations in Chicana Memoir: A Decolonial Perspective." Paper accepted to be given at 54th Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Convention, Niagara Falls, N.Y. March 23-26, 2023.

“Reclaiming Decolonial Spaces of Belonging in Chicana and Ukrainian-German Memoir.” Association for Borderland Studies Annual Conference (Western Social Science Association), Denver. March 30-April 2, 2022.

“Decolonial Spaces of Belonging in the US and Germany: Memoirs by Chicana authors and German writers of Central and East European Descent.” 19th Transatlantic Studies Association (TSA) Conference, Lisbon, Portugal (virtual). July 3-5, 2021

"Decolonial Processes of Unforgetting in Chicana and Bosnian-German Memoir" 2021 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA) Conference. Virtual Conference due to COVID-19 pandemic. June 2-5, 2021

“Text as Therapy: Substance Abuse as a Metaphor of Healing in Rita Indiana’s Hecho en Saturno.” Ohio Latin Americanist Conference (OLAC), Athens, Ohio. Feb 28-29, 2020.

“The Authenticity of Self: Multicultural Experiences in Contemporary Chicana Autobiographical Writing.” Roundtable The Diary as Literature through the Lens of Multiculturalism in America. NeMLA Convention, Washington D.C. March 21-24, 2019.

“Marassá y la nada: cómo re-imaginar la dominicanidad a través del sujeto internarrativo.” Dominican-Haitian Section Session "Global Haiti and the Dominican Republic: The Contradictions of Inclusion and Exclusion." Latin American Studies Association (LASA)’s XXXVI International Congress, Barcelona, Spain. May 23-26, 2018

“Imaginando una dominicanidad pos-binaria: la identidad internarrativa en Marassá y la nada de Alanna Lockward.” VII Jornadas Caribeñistas, "Racismos del siglo XXI en América Latina y el Caribe: orígenes y trayectorias." Centro de Estudios Culturales, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile. Dec. 5-7, 2016

“Intra-Caribbean Diasporic Circularities: The Dominican Cocolo in Stanley’s Tiempo muerto.” Eighth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), Charleston, S.C. Nov. 4-7, 2015

“Encuentros afro-caribeños en la primera década del Trujillato: la novela de la caña en la República Dominicana.” Symposium “El otro al lado: intercambios trans-latinoamericanos e identidades colectivas (siglos XIX-XX)” at the XVII Congreso Internacional de AHILA (Asociación de Historiadores Latinoamericanistas Europeos), Berlin, Germany. Sept. 9-13, 2014