Hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature, Mara Negrón´s new book, De la animalidad no hay salida [There Is No Exit from Animality] will be presented by the author and Francisco José Ramos at the Philosophy Seminar of the University of Puerto Rico on Monday, October 19, 2009, at 10:00am.

De la animalidad no hay salida (Editorial UPR, 2009) presents critical essays on the boundaries between animal, body and city, exploring those confines and the ways in which they occur in forms of hybridity. With a varied array of disparate objects of study, “Mara Negron approaches works of literature, philosophy and art from different historical moments and cultural traditions, proposing new readings organized around three main metaphors: animality, the body, and the city. In the words of the author herself, the texts address the limits of what is narratable, silence, and body.” As one of the reviews states, these essays remind us that critical work may also be an act of literary creation.

Mara Negrón holds an M.A. in French literature and a PhD in comparative literature and gender studies from the University of Paris VIII-Saint-Denis. She is a professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras in the Departments of Humanities and Comparative Literature and is coordinator of the Women and Gender Studies Program. Her research interests include literature, deconstruction, gender, and translation. Negrón has published numerous articles in academic journals and reviews. She is also the author of Une genèse au féminin (1997), Lecturas de la diferencia sexual (1993; with Anne Berger); several translations of works by French thinkers, such as Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous; and her intriguing novel Cartago (2005).

For review and purchasing information, see http://www.amazon.com/Animalidad-No-Hay-Salida-Ensayos/dp/0847711153