Rocio Quispe Agnoli

Rocío Quispe Agnoli is a Professor of Latin American Literatures and Cultures (16th-early 19th centuries), affiliated faculty in the American Indian Studies Program and the Center for Gender in a Global Context, and core faculty of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She received her B.A. in Linguistics and Literature from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in 1985. In 1987, she obtained a D.E.A. (Dîplome d’Édudes Approfondies) in Linguistique/Sémiotique from the Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail. Later, she received her M.A. (1993) and Ph.D. (2000) in Hispanic Studies from Brown University. In 2022, she was named one of the MSU William J. Beal Outstanding Professor recipients and became an Affiliated Scholar of The Quechua Initiative on Global Indigeneity at Harvard University. She has directed the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities (2007-2011) and has held other administrative academic positions at MSU. Her primary area of interest is Latin American Indigenous and Mestizo literary and cultural studies, with a focus on the Andean region. She is known for her work on the Native Peruvian writer Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala (17th century) and the Uchu Inca family in late colonial Mexico. Between 2017 and 2020, she hosted the podcast series Collaborative Edges (Across Languages and Cultures).
She is the recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Award (CLACS 2005, 2008), the MSU Fintz Award for Teaching Excellence in the Arts & Humanities (2012), Successful Peruvian Woman of the Year (2013, the Embassy of Peru in the United States), CAL Leadership Award (2016), Inspirational Woman of the Year-Professional Achievement (GenCen 2019), Lifetime Achievement Award (Women of Color Community, 2024), and the CAL Legacy Award (2025).  She directed Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades (REGS) between 2020 and 2024.
Professor Quispe Agnoli also writes fiction under the pen name Rocío Qespi. Her short fiction has received four awards: La Regenta (Spain 1998), Atenea (Spain 1999), Ana María Matute (Spain 1999), and, more recently, Aeternum. Revista de literatura oscura (Perú, 2020). Since 2021, she has been a member of the Qhipa Pacha Collective, alongside Peruvian authors of science fiction and Peruvian futurism.  Since 2024, she writes “La ventana sur” (The South Window), a column on the concept of “the south” as a theme for speculative fiction in horror, terror, and science fiction literature, in Amazing Stories.

Research areas: Colonial Latin American Studies, Decolonial Studies, Women’s Studies, Gender, Sexualities, Indigenous Identities, Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies, Visual Studies, Interdisciplinary approaches to literary and cultural texts, Latin American ficción especulativa (science fiction, horror literature, literatura fantástica)