teaching - research
Currently, I hold the position of Visiting Assistant Professor at Soka University of America. Prior to my move to the United States, I served as a professor at various institutions in Caracas, Venezuela. From 2000 to 2018, I taught Literature, Literary Theory, Semiotics, Communication and Technology, and Photography at Central University of Venezuela, Prodiseño School of Visual Communication and Design, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Fotográficos [Photographic Studies Research Center], Escuela Nacional de Cine [National Film School], and Roberto Mata Taller de Fotografía [School of Photography].
In my teaching and research endeavors, I’ve seamlessly integrated my studies in Literature and Cultural Studies with my subsequent training as a photographer. I’ve also embraced the empirical approach to other visual disciplines, including Cinema and Design. The challenges that arose from applying the same teaching practice across these diverse areas, coupled with my technical, plastic, and aesthetic concerns in poetic and photographic creation, compelled me to develop a unique approach. I’ve integrated concepts and analysis tools from various disciplines, such as Literary Studies, Deconstruction, Semiotics, Visual Studies, Philosophy of the Image, Psychoanalysis, Communication, Media, and Technology. This mixed model serves as a general theory, instrumental in analyzing and interpreting verbal or visual works. It also provides a conceptual horizon for contemplating the discipline of study itself, whether it’s literature, design, photography, or cinema. Furthermore, it serves as a substrate for conceptualizing research or artistic projects.
My classes and projects have gravitated around these aspects, particularly focusing on reflections on specific triangulations between Territory, Memory-Imagination, and Experience. In this regard, I am intrigued by exploring how these relationships manifest in liminal discourses, situated at the fringes of genre or style conventions within their respective verbal and visual disciplines. Recent trends in photography, such as post-photography and photopoetics, and poetry, including post-poetry and digital poetry, exemplify these liminal discourses. I am particularly interested in examining the connections between poetic practices and transmediality, particularly those related to photography and experimental poetry.
My areas of expertise include Visual Semiotics, Art-Based Critical Pedagogies, and Philosophy, with a specific focus on photography, poetry, performance, contemporary culture, digital media, memory, and Latin America. My doctoral project, titled “Photooetics of migrant memories. Archive, Body and Listening in Venezuelan Women Photographers,” was supported by the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences of the University of California, Riverside, and the Center for Ideas and Society. This project delves into the role of poetic gestures, photography, and digital media in the performativity of memory during experiences of forced migration, exile, and traumatic violence.
Between 2019 and 2021, I collaborated as an author and reviewer on projects in Pedagogías Críticas para la enseñanza de lenguas. This team of researchers and educators is dedicated to developing pedagogical methodologies. You can find more resources at https://pedagogiascriticas.ucr.edu/resources/. Additionally, I participated as a research assistant in an interdisciplinary and antiracist research project focused on social inclusion and linguistic justice. The project aimed to create innovative Spanish teaching materials for Deaf people in higher education on the U.S.-Mexico border. The project was led by Claudia Holguín Mendoza (UC Riverside) and María Angélica Castro Caballero (Universidad Autónoma de Baja California). The project received funding from the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS) and the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología de México (Conacyt).
In addition, during the academic year 2020/2021, I was able to expand my research framework and organize and moderate discussion events with Latin American artists and scholars. These events were part of the multicampus graduate student working group, “Performance in the Wake of the Political: Latin American Performance as Theorizations of Contemporary Politics,” which was supported by a grant from the University of California Humanities Research Institute.
Recent publications and events related to my research on poetics of memory can be consulted here:
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Casas de desolvido. Cronotopos diaspóricos en las obras de tres fotógrafas venezolanas
Mujer, voz y representación: fotografía y materiales alternativos en el mundo hispanohablante, 2025.
Paso a paso, de boca en boca Deriva de archivo / archivo a la deriva en las memorias migrantes de Freisy González Portales y Diana Rangel Lampe Revista Palabra y Razón. Universidad Católica del Maule, 2024.
Inauditas: Tracing the Sound of Migrant Memories in Venezuelan Women Photographers
by Maria del Rosario Acosta López and Elena Cardona. 2023.
(Special Issue) Performance in the Wake | Cuerpas ante lo politico. Edited by Elena Cardona, Judit R. Palencia Gutiérrez, Gwendolen Pare, and Isabella Vergara. Liminalities. volume 18, issue 3 | 2022
(research project) “On the (In)audible in Art (Part I): Tracing the Sound of lo inaudito in Venezuelan Migrant Women Photographers”. Maria Acosta & Elena Cardona. University of California Humanities Research Institute. 2021/2022
(Article) “Potencia, no poder”. De la fotografía como gesto de resistencia y migración. Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, 1 December 2020, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 153-178(26). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/ejpc_00020_1
(Conference paper) “Migrant Memories. Photopoetics as Gesture of Resistance of Venezuelan Diaspora”. Postmemory and The Contemporary World. 2nd International Interdisciplinary Conference. 24-25 February 2021.
(Talk) Durar o arder. Pruebas de fuego. Agencia poética y política. Organized by Ciudad Laboratorio, Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, Prodiseño. 19 March 2021
(Talk) Potencia, no poder: contar la experiencia. Organized by Ciudad Laboratorio, Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, Prodiseño. 25 May 2020.
(photographic portfolio presentation). Fotografía y poesía: Hacia una poética del silencio. Tarde de Fotografos. 25 de enero 2018. Caracas. 25th January 2018.