Javier Sanjinés

Professor Javier Sanjinés retired from active faculty status on May 31, 2023, after twenty-six years at the University of Michigan.

Javier attended the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (La Paz, Bolivia) where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science in 1971. He studied literary sociology at the Ecole Pratique de Hautes Etudes in Paris, France, where he also earned in 1974 a master’s degree in Latin American Studies at the Université de Paris-III.

After working two years as an attorney in La Paz, Javier moved to the United States in 1982, earning a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese from the University of Minnesota (1988). After faculty appointments at the Catholic University of Bolivia, the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, and the University of Maryland, he joined the University of Michigan as Assistant Professor of Spanish in 1997 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2003 and to Professor in 2010. 

Javier is a distinguished scholar of modern Latin American literature and a highly regarded specialist in the cultural politics of postcolonial societies.  Throughout his career, he was invited professor in several universities in Latin America, such as the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (Ecuador) and Duke University.  He has given numerous invited lectures in some of the most prestigious universities in the US (Berkeley, Duke, Stanford) and abroad (Cambridge, Shanghai, Goethe Institute), as well as in different institutions such as the World Bank, the Department of State, and the Library of Congress.