Ignacio López-Calvo’s main research interests are Hispanic American, Brazilian, Latinx, and Spanish-language Filipino cultural production. In recent years, he has focused in particular on cultural production by Latin American authors of Asian ancestry, withing the context of Transpacific Studies and of the intersection among racialization, gender, sexuality, migration, authoritarianism, and human rights. While his 2008 monograph Imaging the Chinese in Cuban Literature and Culture (the first book in the subfield of studies of Asian-Latin American literature) entered a virtually new subfield, there is now increased interest in this area of study. This initial work has evolved from the imaging of the Chinese in Cuban cultural production to the self-representation of both the Chinese and the Japanese in Peru, Brazil, and Mexico: The Affinity of the Eye: Writing Nikkei in Peru (2013), Dragons in the Land of the Condor: Writing Tusán in Peru (2014; finalist in the International Latino Book Award in 2015), Japanese Brazilian Saudades: Diasporic Identities and Cultural Production (2019), and The Mexican Transpacific: Nikkei Writing, Visual Arts, Performance (2022). From the critical lens of Asia-Latin America as a research method (not just an object of study), he studies representative works showing diasporic identities in the context of what they mean to the construction of Latin American national projects. He is currently writing a book on Chinese Mexican cultural production and another on Spanish-language Filipino cultural production about the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. In addition, he has edited three volumes on Orientalism and East-West cross-cultural relations, coedited an anthology of Arab and Jewish Spanish-language authors, two anthologies of Chinese Peruvian and Chinese Latin American writing, and one on Japanese-Latin American writing.
Regarding other areas of research, he is interested in Latinx cultural production from and about Los Angeles, California. His Latino Los Angeles in Film and Fiction: The Cultural Production of Social Anxiety (2011) made Choice Magazine’s annual Outstanding Academic Title list in 2012 and was also a finalist in the International Latino Book Award that year. It examines the relationship between identity and the distribution and representation of urban space. As a continuation of this book, he coedited an anthology on Latinx non-fiction from Los Angeles, Latinx Writing Los Angeles: Nonfiction Dispatches from a Decolonial Rebellion (2018), also a finalist in the 2020 International Latino Book Award, and he is currently co-editing A History of Los Angeles Literature (Cambridge UP). He has also published several other monographs and (co)edited volumes in prestigious university presses. The most recent ones are The Oxford Handbook of the Latin American Novel (Coedited with Juan E. De Castro, Oxford UP, 2023; 860 pages): A History of Chilean Literature (Cambridge U.P., 2021); The Oxford Handbook of Gabriel García Márquez (2021); The Oxford Handbook of the Latin American Novel (forthcoming); and Refugees, Refuge, and Human Displacement (Anthem, forthcoming).
Regarding his editorial work, he co-founded and is the co-executive director of the open-access academic journal Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, listed as the ninth best journal in Latin American Studies by Google Scholar in 2017. He also co-founded and codirects the book series “Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia” with Palgrave Macmillan (nine books published or in press), and the Anthem Press’s Book Series “Anthem Studies in Latin American Literature and Culture” (four books published or in press).
