Emil’ Keme

Graduate courses he has taught include Indigenous Literatures of the Americas, Contemporary Central American Narrative and Spanish-American Literature:1880–Present.

Undergraduate courses include Mesoamerica Through Its Literature, Introduction to Indigenous Literatures, Contemporary Latin American Narrative: Magic realism, boom and post-boom, Contemporary Latin America: México, Central America and the Andes and Introduction to Latin American Literature.

http://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/712/1266#.UaSbcrXVArU

Other articles have been published in venues such as Mesoamerica, Studies in American Indian Literature, Revista Iberoamericana, Latin American Caribbean and Ethnic Studies, Procesos: Revista Ecuatoriana de Historia and Revista de Estudios Interétnicos.

His book, Le Maya Q'atzij/Our Maya Word: Poetics of Resistance and Emancipation From Iximulew/Guatemala 1960-2012, which focuses on the poetry of ten contemporary Maya poets, was awarded the 2020 Casa de las Americas Literary Prize.

He has presented his work on the Mayan movements at Penn State Lehigh Valley, and the Guatemalan Civil War at Virginia Commonwealth University.

He has been a professor of English and Indigenous Studies at Emory University since the fall semester of 2023 and was formerly an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2007 through 2023.

Emilio del Valle Escalante {born 1970), known as Emil' Keme, is a Guatemalan/K'iche Maya professor and researcher in Indigenous literatures and cultures at Emory University. He has written and edited books on his fields of expertise as well as various journal articles. He has also presented talks at other U.S. educational institutions.

Keme received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2004.

His areas of expertise include contemporary Latin American and indigenous literatures and social movements, cultural and post-colonial studies and indigenous studies.

Much of his work has been focused on textual production by Indigenous peoples in Abiayala (the Americas) and how these challenge the usual political and social narratives about Indigenous peoples in Latin America.

This is part of a broader theme of colonialism, nationhood, national identity, race/ethnicity and gender.