Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles is a Ph.D. candidate who earned her M.A. in Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis in 2008. She also completed the Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies in 2011. Her research interests include 19th-Century Latin-American literature, Caribbean literature, Brazilian literature, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies and Afro-Latin American Diaspora. Her article, "La poesía erótica de Mercedes Matamoros en la genealogía del modernismo latinoamericano," appeared in Latin American Literary Review in 2011. She is currently working on her dissertation titled "Freedom’s Heirs: Racial Criminalization and Exclusion in Colombia, Brazil, and Cuba (1830-1912)."