Daniel E. Barrera-Rivera

Tracing entanglements across texts and transatlantic imaginaries

Daniel E. Barrera Rivera portrait

About

I am a literary and cultural studies researcher specializing in spatial theory, postcolonial narratology, and environmental humanities. My work examines narratives as entangled, material-semiotic networks that resist hierarchical ontologies, with a particular focus on how homecoming, displacement, and memory are figured across transatlantic literary traditions.

Currently, I am developing a methodology I call "entangled poetics" to trace how texts emerge through relations of power, affect, and historical interconnection across Anglophone and Spanish postcolonial contexts—moving beyond distant and close reading to embrace the messy, relational complexity of literary production interphilologically and transdisciplinarily. With experience teaching literature, translation, and digital methods at the university level (including English for Research in the Humanities at UNAM), I approach scholarship as a collaborative and public-facing practice.

Entangled Poetics

This approach combines spatial theory, feminist material-semiotics (Donna Haraway, Karen Barad), sticky affects (Sara Ahmed), and postcolonial relationality (Édouard Glissant) to understand how narratives emerge not as isolated artifacts but as nodes in vast networks of cultural exchange, translation, and resistance. It asks: How do texts carry the traces of their histories? How do colonial and decolonial imaginaries shape narrative form?

Research Interests

Postcolonial Narratology Spatial Theory Environmental Humanities Narratology Transatlantic Studies Interphilological Methods Indigenous Studies Border Studies Memory Studies Computational Text Analysis

Current Research

Entangled Poetics: Postcolonial Topologies of Nostos/Homecoming

My primary research investigates how postcolonial Anglophone and Spanish literatures refigure the ancient Greek concept of nostos (homecoming). Rather than treating nostos as a universal theme, I explore how authors from diasporic, displaced, and decolonial contexts reimagine homecoming as a spatial practice—one that resists colonial cartographies and linear narratives of return.

This interphilological project reads across English and Spanish, tracing how writers like Louise Glück, Margaret Atwood, Rivera Garza, Tommy Orange, and Ada Limón reconfigure classical narrative structures to address contemporary experiences of migration, memory, and belonging.

Recent Thesis: Beyond Homer and the Human

My Master's thesis examined how contemporary anglophone retellings of Homer's Odyssey deploy computational metaphors and posthuman aesthetics to critique anthropocentric narrative traditions. Using affect theory and algorithmic analysis, I traced how authors like Madeline Miller and Zachary Mason challenge the classical epic.

Projects

DanZine

Visual-Critical Intervention | 2025–Ongoing

A mixed-media fanzine series developing tidal poetics through collage, counter-cartography, and bookmaking. Emerging from seminar work on aquatic environments, DanZine enacts practice-as-research: performing relational thinking through material-semiotic methods. Issue 1 features readings of Ghosh, Walcott, De Robertis, and the Spilhaus projection as entangled oceanic figurations. Each issue corresponds to a theoretical cluster in my dissertation, translating scholarly arguments into visual form.

View DanZine Portfolio →

Homerica Dataset

Database | 2025 (Ongoing)

Comprehensive database documenting the entanglement between Homeric epic and Anglophone cultural production from 1800 to present. Tracks retellings, translations, adaptations, and transfigurations, revealing a contemporary shift toward feminist and decolonial engagements with classical narrative.

Homer's Living Network

Digital Humanities | 2024–2025

Computational text analysis investigating how stylistic features at the lexeme level register cultural drift across twentieth-century English translations of Homer's Odyssey. Combines distant reading methods with close analysis of translation choices to map shifting cultural values.

Figurations of America

Comparative Poetry | 2024–2025

Close readings of Spanish and English poetry addressing "America" as lived experience. Examines how spatial and cultural imaginaries are contested and reconfigured across linguistic and national boundaries, from Whitman to Neruda to contemporary border poets.

Perilexia

Algorithmic Narratology | 2023

Five-stage computational algorithm identifying previously unrecognized lexical patterns structuring character transformation in Victorian novels. Coined the term "perilexia" to describe these recurrent narrative structures that operate below the level of conscious authorial intention.

Education & Experience

Master's in English Literatures and Cultures

University of Tübingen, Germany | 2023–2025 | Grade: 1.21

Thesis: Beyond Homer and the Human: Affects and Algorithms in Posthuman Odysseys
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Christoph Reinfandt, Prof. Dr. Ingrid Hotz-Davies

Data Science Professional Certificate

University of Toronto, Canada | 2021–2022

Specialized training in Python, machine learning, NLP, and data visualization for humanities research applications.

Digital Humanities Advanced Diploma

Universidad Iberoamericana, CDMX, México | 2021

Focus on computational methods for literary analysis, corpus construction, and digital scholarly practices.

Bachelor's in Modern Languages & Literatures (English)

UNAM, México | 2016–2020 | Honors (9.48)

Thesis: Toward an Etiology of the Modern Chaucer: A Prolegomenon

Teaching Experience

English for Research in the Humanities

UNAM, México | 2020–2023

Designed and taught university-level courses in academic reading and writing skills to groups of 50+ undergraduate students. Focused on developing critical reading strategies, research methodologies, and scholarly communication across disciplines.

Conference Presentations

Grants & Awards

Let's Connect

I'm always interested in conversations about postcolonial theory, computational methods in the humanities, translation studies, and interdisciplinary approaches to literary scholarship.