Jacobo Sefamí
Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
School of Humanities
School of Humanities
Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
Licenciatura, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Licenciatura, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Email: jsefami@uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
368 Humanities Hall
Mail Code: 5275
Irvine, CA 92697
368 Humanities Hall
Mail Code: 5275
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Modern and Contemporary Latin American Poetry/ Mexican Literature/ Spanish American Literature/ Jewish Latin American Writing
Websites
Academic Distinctions
Gabino Barreda Medal (1982, UNAM), Presidential Fellowship (1993, NYU), DAAD recipient, at the University of Bochum, Germany (2019).
Research Abstract
My research and creative writing publications can be divided into three main areas:
Contemporary Latin American Poetry;
Jewish and Sephardic Studies;
Creative Writing.
My field of specialization is Modern and Contemporary Latin American poetry—a vast, diverse, and constantly expanding area of research. I have worked mainly on three generations: (1) poets associated with the Surrealist movement in Latin America, which produced its first works in the 1940s and 50s, such as Gonzalo Rojas, Olga Orozco, Enrique Molina, and Álvaro Mutis; (2) a radical group of Latin American poets of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s characterized by linguistic experimentation, often identified through the poetics of the Neo-Baroque; and (3) 21st-century poets, primarily from Mexico, including Alejandro Tarrab, Rocío Cerón, and Natalia Toledo, among others.
I published Caleidoscopia. Escrituras y poéticas de lo oblicuo en América Latina (Caleidoscopia: Writing and Poetics of the Oblique in Latin America, 2021). The book includes essays on poets who opted for slips of meaning through derivative language, privileging the marginal and the parenthetical, critiquing the traditional codes of the genre, and insisting on the instability of subjects who constantly mock themselves. The initial section includes essays on the Neo-Baroque and its relations to Modernismo (Latin American Symbolism) and the Avant-Garde. It then turns to fluctuations of subjectivity through migration, alterity, and movement in the poetry of José Kozer (Cuba), Alejandra Pizarnik (Argentina), Gloria Gervitz (Mexico), and Carmen Boullosa (Mexico); torture under dictatorship in Chile and the student massacre in Mexico as explored in the poetry of Raúl Zurita (Chile) and David Huerta (Mexico); and linguistic experimentation and sensuality in the work of Haroldo de Campos (Brazil), Coral Bracho (Mexico), and Eduardo Espina (Uruguay). A final section focuses on Mexican poetry in the 21st century, examining minority languages (including essays on death and the poetic renewal of Judeo-Spanish in Myriam Moscona, and Zapotec-language poetry by Natalia Toledo), visual representation (Víctor Cabrera), ruins, decay, and marginalization (Alejandro Tarrab), and the poetics of persecution through the representation of Inquisition trials in colonial times (Luis Felipe Fabre’s La sodomía en la Nueva España).
In the field of Sephardic Studies, I co-edited Por mi boka. Textos de la diáspora sefardí en ladino (y versiones en español contemporáneo) (Por mi boka: Texts of the Sephardic Diaspora in Judeo-Spanish [and Versions in Contemporary Spanish], 2013) with Myriam Moscona. Although there is abundant research on the oral literature of Sephardic Jews, very little had been done on original creative writing. We conducted extensive research and limited our anthology to texts that met our criteria for literary and linguistic excellence. Because the book was intended for a broader readership, we also provided versions in Contemporary Spanish. Moscona and I created modern textual versions of Meam Loez, Clarisse Nicoïdski, and Marcel Cohen. I also co-edited with Matthias Lehmann a special issue of I-Mex Revista (an electronic journal published in Düsseldorf, Germany) on The Jewish Experience in Mexico. The volume includes articles on Inquisition trials, migration experiences (particularly from Lebanon and Syria), and literary criticism on three key contemporary female writers: Esther Seligson, Margo Glantz, and Myriam Moscona.
In creative writing, my novel Los dolientes (2004; translated by Kayla García as Mourning for Papá: A Story of a Syrian Jewish Family in Mexico, 2010) relates to mourning rituals among Syrian Jews in Mexico City. I published Por tierras extrañas (2019), a book that oscillates between genres—memoir, autobiography, autofiction, and travel narrative. Its main character searches for his origins and travels through different parts of the world; the central section chronicles his explorations in Jewish neighborhoods in Istanbul and Damascus. I also published a poetry chapbook, Mili, en lo inacabado mutante, which confronts a personal childhood tragedy. The chapbook experiments with a Neo-Baroque-influenced poetic style, using broken grammar that attempts to imitate a breath pattern akin to crying. My anthology Vaquitas pintadas (2004; with a beautifully illustrated edition for Unidiversidad, 2017) compiles poems, short stories, essays, aphorisms, and more—all about the cow, written in Spanish. It is conceived as a creative project in which multiple images of this animal are constructed through the literary versions in the anthology (including my own). Subibaja (2023) is an anthology of my recorded creative writing for the series Voz Viva, available permanently and free online.
I have taught a wide variety of courses, including Humanities Core; surveys of Latin American literature; courses on Latin American poets, 20th-century Mexican literature, and the short novel; and a GE course centered on Mexico and Central America. At the graduate level, I offer seminars on different periods (Modernismo, Vanguardia), on individual writers (Vallejo, Huidobro, Paz, Rulfo), and on several generations of poets, from Surrealism to contemporary internet-based poetry.
I have organized several Latin American cinema series, served as co-director of the annual Juan Bruce-Novoa Mexican Studies Conference, and directed conferences on poetry and on Jewish Mexican studies. I co-curated an exhibit of Mesoamerican Codices at UCI’s Main Library (available online at the UCI Libraries website). I served as Editor of Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos and as contributing editor on Mexican poetry for the Handbook of Latin American Studies, published by the Library of Congress. I was also Study Center Director of the University of California Education Abroad Program in Madrid, Spain.
Contemporary Latin American Poetry;
Jewish and Sephardic Studies;
Creative Writing.
My field of specialization is Modern and Contemporary Latin American poetry—a vast, diverse, and constantly expanding area of research. I have worked mainly on three generations: (1) poets associated with the Surrealist movement in Latin America, which produced its first works in the 1940s and 50s, such as Gonzalo Rojas, Olga Orozco, Enrique Molina, and Álvaro Mutis; (2) a radical group of Latin American poets of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s characterized by linguistic experimentation, often identified through the poetics of the Neo-Baroque; and (3) 21st-century poets, primarily from Mexico, including Alejandro Tarrab, Rocío Cerón, and Natalia Toledo, among others.
I published Caleidoscopia. Escrituras y poéticas de lo oblicuo en América Latina (Caleidoscopia: Writing and Poetics of the Oblique in Latin America, 2021). The book includes essays on poets who opted for slips of meaning through derivative language, privileging the marginal and the parenthetical, critiquing the traditional codes of the genre, and insisting on the instability of subjects who constantly mock themselves. The initial section includes essays on the Neo-Baroque and its relations to Modernismo (Latin American Symbolism) and the Avant-Garde. It then turns to fluctuations of subjectivity through migration, alterity, and movement in the poetry of José Kozer (Cuba), Alejandra Pizarnik (Argentina), Gloria Gervitz (Mexico), and Carmen Boullosa (Mexico); torture under dictatorship in Chile and the student massacre in Mexico as explored in the poetry of Raúl Zurita (Chile) and David Huerta (Mexico); and linguistic experimentation and sensuality in the work of Haroldo de Campos (Brazil), Coral Bracho (Mexico), and Eduardo Espina (Uruguay). A final section focuses on Mexican poetry in the 21st century, examining minority languages (including essays on death and the poetic renewal of Judeo-Spanish in Myriam Moscona, and Zapotec-language poetry by Natalia Toledo), visual representation (Víctor Cabrera), ruins, decay, and marginalization (Alejandro Tarrab), and the poetics of persecution through the representation of Inquisition trials in colonial times (Luis Felipe Fabre’s La sodomía en la Nueva España).
In the field of Sephardic Studies, I co-edited Por mi boka. Textos de la diáspora sefardí en ladino (y versiones en español contemporáneo) (Por mi boka: Texts of the Sephardic Diaspora in Judeo-Spanish [and Versions in Contemporary Spanish], 2013) with Myriam Moscona. Although there is abundant research on the oral literature of Sephardic Jews, very little had been done on original creative writing. We conducted extensive research and limited our anthology to texts that met our criteria for literary and linguistic excellence. Because the book was intended for a broader readership, we also provided versions in Contemporary Spanish. Moscona and I created modern textual versions of Meam Loez, Clarisse Nicoïdski, and Marcel Cohen. I also co-edited with Matthias Lehmann a special issue of I-Mex Revista (an electronic journal published in Düsseldorf, Germany) on The Jewish Experience in Mexico. The volume includes articles on Inquisition trials, migration experiences (particularly from Lebanon and Syria), and literary criticism on three key contemporary female writers: Esther Seligson, Margo Glantz, and Myriam Moscona.
In creative writing, my novel Los dolientes (2004; translated by Kayla García as Mourning for Papá: A Story of a Syrian Jewish Family in Mexico, 2010) relates to mourning rituals among Syrian Jews in Mexico City. I published Por tierras extrañas (2019), a book that oscillates between genres—memoir, autobiography, autofiction, and travel narrative. Its main character searches for his origins and travels through different parts of the world; the central section chronicles his explorations in Jewish neighborhoods in Istanbul and Damascus. I also published a poetry chapbook, Mili, en lo inacabado mutante, which confronts a personal childhood tragedy. The chapbook experiments with a Neo-Baroque-influenced poetic style, using broken grammar that attempts to imitate a breath pattern akin to crying. My anthology Vaquitas pintadas (2004; with a beautifully illustrated edition for Unidiversidad, 2017) compiles poems, short stories, essays, aphorisms, and more—all about the cow, written in Spanish. It is conceived as a creative project in which multiple images of this animal are constructed through the literary versions in the anthology (including my own). Subibaja (2023) is an anthology of my recorded creative writing for the series Voz Viva, available permanently and free online.
I have taught a wide variety of courses, including Humanities Core; surveys of Latin American literature; courses on Latin American poets, 20th-century Mexican literature, and the short novel; and a GE course centered on Mexico and Central America. At the graduate level, I offer seminars on different periods (Modernismo, Vanguardia), on individual writers (Vallejo, Huidobro, Paz, Rulfo), and on several generations of poets, from Surrealism to contemporary internet-based poetry.
I have organized several Latin American cinema series, served as co-director of the annual Juan Bruce-Novoa Mexican Studies Conference, and directed conferences on poetry and on Jewish Mexican studies. I co-curated an exhibit of Mesoamerican Codices at UCI’s Main Library (available online at the UCI Libraries website). I served as Editor of Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos and as contributing editor on Mexican poetry for the Handbook of Latin American Studies, published by the Library of Congress. I was also Study Center Director of the University of California Education Abroad Program in Madrid, Spain.
Short Biography
Jacobo Sefamí, from Mexico City, received his licenciatura en Lengua y Literatura Hispánicas from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin. He taught at New York University, and is currently Professor of Latin American literature at the University of California, Irvine. He also directed the University of California’s education abroad program in Madrid, Spain (2003-2005). He served as Editor of Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, and as contributing editor on Mexican poetry to the Handbook of Latin American Studies. He has published articles, interviews, notes, and book reviews for various literary journals in Mexico, Spain, Venezuela, Chile, and the United States. His books include: El destierro apacible y otros ensayos (1987), Contemporary Spanish American Poets (1992), El espejo trizado: la poesía de Gonzalo Rojas (1992), De la imaginación poética: Conversaciones con Gonzalo Rojas, Olga Orozco, Alvaro Mutis y José Kozer (1996), Medusario. Muestra de poesía latinoamericana (co-editor, 1996), La voracidad grafómana: José Kozer (editor, 2002), Vaquitas pintadas, an anthology of texts related to the cow (2004, with images in the review Unidiversidad), La experiencia judía en México / The Jewish Experience in Mexico (co-edited with Matthias Lehmann, 2018), Por mi boka. Textos de la diáspora sefardí en ladino (co-edited with Myriam Moscona, 2013). He has also published a novel, Los dolientes (2004, translated into English as Mourning for Papá. A Story of a Syrian Jewish Family in Mexico, 2010). His latest books are: Por tierras extrañas (stories and travel narratives, 2019), Mili, en lo inacabado mutante (poems, 2019), El camaleón y la esponja: David Huerta. Entrevista, ensayos y antología poética (2019), Caleidoscopia. Escrituras y poéticas de lo oblicuo en América Latina (2021), and Subibaja (anthology), in the series Voz Viva de México (2023).
Publications
Reviews: Reseña Moscona, Reseña Muniz-Huberman, Reseña Portnoy, Reseña Ferguson, Reseña Guerra, Reseña Bados, Bruce-Novoa, Los Dolientes, Nota Patán
Mountain View, California: Floricanto Press, 2010.
Translated by Kay (Kayla) S. García.
[Translation of "Los dolientes".]
A new, modified, and expanded edition, with images by Alicia Ceballos,
was published as a monograph at Unidiversidad. Revista de Pensamiento
y Cultura de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, año 7, 27
(April-June, 2017).
https://issuu.com/uni-diversidad/docs/unidiversidad_27
2nd edition, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Mansalva, 2010.
3rd edition, Santiago de Chile: RIL Editores, 2016.
2nd expanded edition [it adds interviews with Enrique Molina and David Huerta], São Paulo, Brasil: Lumme Editor, 2013.
Mexico City: UNAM, 1992.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.
Mexico City: Premia Editora, 1987.
Subibaja. Prólogo de Myriam Moscona.
Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Colección Voz Viva), 2023.
https://vozviva.unam.mx/handle/123456789/120
Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Colección Voz Viva), 2023.
https://vozviva.unam.mx/handle/123456789/120
Caleidoscopia. Escrituras y poéticas de lo oblicuo en América Latina. [Caleidoscopia. Writing and Poetics on the Oblique in Latin America]
Santiago, Chile: RIL Editores, 2021.
Santiago, Chile: RIL Editores, 2021.
El camaleón y la esponja: David Huerta. Ensayos, entrevista y antología poética [The Chamaleon and the Sponge: David Huerta. Essays, Interview, and Poetic Anthology].
Mexico City: Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, 2019.
Mexico City: Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, 2019.
Mili, en lo inacabado mutante [Mili, in the Mutant Unfinished]. Poems.
Chapbook.
Mexico City: Bonobos Editores, 2019.
Chapbook.
Mexico City: Bonobos Editores, 2019.
Por tierras extrañas [By Strange Lands]. Shorts stories, travel chronicles.
Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2019.
Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2019.
La experiencia judía en México. [The Jewish Experience in Mexico]. Co-edited with Matthias Lehmann. I-Mex. Revista. México Interdisciplinario / Interdisciplinary Mexico (Dusseldorf University, Germany) XIV (2018-2).
https://www.imex-revista.com/en/ediciones/xiv-the-jewish-experience-in-mexico/
https://www.imex-revista.com/en/ediciones/xiv-the-jewish-experience-in-mexico/
Por mi boka. Textos de la diáspora sefardí en ladino (y versiones en español contemporáneo). Co-edited with Myriam Moscona. Lumen, 2013.
Raúl Zurita, Mi mejilla es el cielo estrellado. Antología. [My Cheek is the Starry Sky. Anthology] Prólogo por Jacobo Sefamí; selección en colaboración con Alejandro Tarrab. Mexico City: Editorial Aldus, Instituto Coahuilense de Cultura, 2004.
2nd edition. Mexico City: Matadero Editorial, 2018.
2nd edition. Mexico City: Matadero Editorial, 2018.
Reviews: Reseña Moscona, Reseña Muniz-Huberman, Reseña Portnoy, Reseña Ferguson, Reseña Guerra, Reseña Bados, Bruce-Novoa, Los Dolientes, Nota Patán
Mountain View, California: Floricanto Press, 2010.
Translated by Kay (Kayla) S. García.
[Translation of "Los dolientes".]
A new, modified, and expanded edition, with images by Alicia Ceballos,
was published as a monograph at Unidiversidad. Revista de Pensamiento
y Cultura de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, año 7, 27
(April-June, 2017).
https://issuu.com/uni-diversidad/docs/unidiversidad_27
2nd edition, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Mansalva, 2010.
3rd edition, Santiago de Chile: RIL Editores, 2016.
2nd expanded edition [it adds interviews with Enrique Molina and David Huerta], São Paulo, Brasil: Lumme Editor, 2013.
Mexico City: UNAM, 1992.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.
Mexico City: Premia Editora, 1987.
Professional Societies
Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana
Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA)
UC-Mexicanistas
Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=3267
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=3267
Last updated
11/15/2025
11/15/2025