Michigan State University

Faculty Member, Romance and Classical Studies

Associate Professor

Arts and Letters

About

A native from Perú, Rocío Quispe-Agnoli is Associate Professor of  Colonial Latin American Studies in the Department of Romance and Classical Studies at Michigan State. She is core faculty of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Center for Gender Studies in a Global Context. She is also affiliated faculty in the American Indian Studies Program and the Program of Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities.  She has been Director of the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State (2007-2011), which is the MSU General Education program in Arts and Humanities.
She earned a M.A. in Sciences du Langage in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toulouse II, and a A.M. and her Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies at Brown University.
Publications include "La fe indígena en la escritura: resistencia e identidad en la obra de Guamán Poma de Ayala"  (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos Press, 2006); a special issue of "Cuaderno Internacional de Estudios Humanísticos y Literatura" entitled "Beyond the Convent: Colonial Women’s Voices and Daily Challenges in Spanish America" (2005), and many articles on race, ethnicity and identity, women's and gender studies, visual studies and lately television studies.
Rocío Quispe-Agnoli is also a creative writer and has received three awards for her short fiction (La Regenta 1998, Atenea 1999 and Ana María Matute 1999). Her first book of short fiction "Durmiendo en el agua" ("Sleeping Under Water") was published by Editorial Mundo Ajeno (Lima, Perú) in 2008.
An amateur photographer, she has won the 2011 MSU Global Focus Competition - People's Choice Award with her photo "Dawn by the Sundial." This photo, taken in May 2011 at 6:00 AM in Machu Picchu, shows an Inca sundial in a foggy background (see: http://isp.msu.edu/awards/photocontest/byyear/2011/photos.php?i=11 ) 
Her current research project involves women's agency and textual production of sixteenth-century Peru's encomenderAs.


Rocío lives with her husband, Steve, her son, Jan, and their chocolate lab, Max. When not in Michigan, she spends most of her time at the Delaware Bay, and in colonial archives around the world, especially in Perú. Every four years, she avidly follows the Soccer World Cup.

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