Nhora Lucía Serrano, Ph.D.

Director of Learning and Research Services

Burke Library, First Floor
315-859-4493
nserrano@hamilton.edu

 

Originally from Colombia, Dr. Nhora Lucía Serrano is a trained Early Modern Comparative Literature scholar whose areas of focus include: Technology Enhanced Learning & Educational Innovation, Digital Humanities, History of Book History/Print Culture, Visual Studies (Graphic Narratives and Editorial Cartoons & Comics), Latin America/Latinx, and Medieval And Renaissance Studies.

In 2018 Dr. Serrano was selected to be a  Mellon Press Diversity Fellow at the MIT Press/MIT. In 2017 she was selected as a 2018 Eisner Industry Awards judge. During the summer 2017, she was awarded a summer NEH Institute fellowship to participate in a 4-week seminar at the Newberry Library where she researched early 20^th century Chicago Tribune cartoons. In 2014 she was awarded a Smithsonian National Postal Museum fellowship for her project on the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair postal cards and postage stamps and its relationship to editorial cartoons.

Dr. Serrano is a founding member and currently the Treasurer of the Comics Studies Society, and presently serves on the MLA Executive Forum on Book History, Print Cultures, Lexicography and is the Forum's elected Representative to the MLA Delegate Assembly. Previously, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College, and a Visiting Scholar of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. From 2014-2018, she served on the MLA Executive Forum on Comics and Graphic Narratives. 

DISTINCTIONS

International Judge (Invited)

• Member, EMIERT Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Awards Committee (ALA), 2021-23

• GNCRT Best Graphic Novels for Children Selection Committee (ALA), 2021-22

• Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, Comic-Con International San Diego, 2018

Fellowships and grants:

• Next Leaders Fellowship Fellow, 2022-23

• Leading Change Institute Fellow, Council on Library and Information Resources, 2020-21

• Mellon Press Diversity Fellow (Info. Science, Communication, Visual Culture, Design), 2018-19 

• NEH Summer Institute Scholar: "Making Modernism: Literature and Culture in 20th Century Chicago,” Newberry Library, Chicago, IL., summer 2017

• Smithsonian National Postal Museum and Washington 2006 World Philatelic Exhibition Scholarship for “Commemorating the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair: The Columbian Exposition and the First Souvenir Postal Cards,” spring 2014

• Visiting Scholar of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, 2014-15

Teaching awards and grants:

• Teaching recognition campus-wide: “Significant Impact Nomination” for Intellectual Development (Tufts Univ. first-year and sophomore survey), 2015
• Most Valuable Professor in the College of Liberal Arts Award (Cal. State Univ., Long Beach), 2011-12

Hamilton College

• Special Collections Grant (“Graphic Satire: Editorial Cartoons”), 2017-18
• Special Collections Grant (“New World Printing & The Columbian Exchange”), 2016-17

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

Books:

• Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis. Edited anthology, sole editor. Advances in Comics Series.
• Curious Collectors, Collected Curiosities: An lnterdisciplinary Study (co-editor with Janelle A. Schwartz). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 20 I 0. Listed in "Books of Critical Interest'' in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 37, No. 3 (spring 2011), pp. 574-581.

Articles:

• “Casting el Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega, Comparatively Speaking.” MLA Approaches to Teaching Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s Royal Commentaries & Other Works. Editors Christian Fernández & José A. Mazzotti. Forthcoming 2021.

• “Columbia and the Editorial Cartoon.” The Oxford Handbook of Comics Studies. Oxford University Press. Edited by Frederick Luis Aldama. Print publication: September 2020; Published online: March 2019.

• “Illuminating Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The Museum of Innocence.” MLA Approaches to Teaching Orhan Pamuk. Editors David Damrosch and Sevinç Tûrkkan. (Nov. 2017), 202-11.

• “Postcards from the Past: 1893 Chicago World Fair and Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth.” Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis. Routledge. March 10, 2021.

• “(Un)Tangling Arachne & the Latina Storyteller” in Gendering XXI: New Trends in Latina and Hispanic Caribbean Literatures in the 21st Century, Puerto Rico: Editorial Tiempo Nuevo. Editors Pilar Melero and Nancy Bird-Soto. (May 2017), 151-81.

• “Visual Frames and Breaking the Rules of the Reconquista.” Playthings in Early Modernity. Editor Allison Levy, Medieval Institute Pubs., Western Michigan Univ. (Feb. 2017), 261-77.

• “LACMA’s Gambit: In Wonderland’s Surrealist Women.” X-Tra Contemporary Art Quarterly 15.2 (Winter 2013), 102-113.

COURSES TAUGHT

• Checkmate!: Play, Games & Cultural Exchanges in the Mediterranean Basin
• Dream a Little Dream: Virtual Reality and Literature
• Immigrants and Comics
• Lost Civilizations: Latin America & its Literary Imagination
• Readings in World Literature I
• Show and Tell: Comics and Graphic Narratives
• Visual Narratives: Images With(In) Books

CURATORIAL EXPERIENCE

• Curator of “Gus Arriola: Modernism and the Latino Cartoonist.” Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, The Ohio State University. 2023-24

• Curator of “The Columbian Exchange.” Burke Library, Hamilton College. 2016-2017

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A., New York University
B.A., Amherst College

LANGUAGES

Spanish: native speaker
French: excellent
Quechua, Italian and Occitan: proficient
Portuguese, Latin (classical and medieval), Galician-Portuguese, Greek, Andalusi Arabic: reading knowledge

SERVICE

International/National

• 2022-2025
  Appointed Member by Executive Council, MLA Committee on Information Technology
• 2020–2025
  Delegate Assembly Member (elected) for Book History, Print Cultures, Lexicography, Modern Language Association
• 2019–2024
  Member (elected), MLA Executive Committee, Discussion Group on Book History, Print Cultures, Lexicography

• 2014–present
  Founding Member and Treasurer (elected), Comics Studies Society

• 2013–2018
  Member (elected), MLA Executive Committee, Discussion Group on Comics and Graphic Narratives

Hamilton College

• 2022-2024
  Posse Mentor, Hamilton Posse Miami 13
•  2022-present
  Ex Officio Committee Member, Faculty Committee on the Digital Arts

Co-Editor of Book Series

• Crossing Lines: Transcultural/Transnational Comics Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press