Marcy Schwartz is Professor and chair of the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese and her area of research and teaching is Latin American literary and cultural studies from the twentieth century to the present. She has published on Latin American urban space, translation, photography, and public book culture. Her teaching and research focus on the Public Humanities by engaging with reading and book culture in community settings. Her books most relevant to the Rutgers Initiative for the Book include /Public Pages: Reading along the Latin American Streetscape/ (U TX P, 2018) that investigates public-access literary reading programs in Latin American cities that rely on urban infrastructure; and /Voice-Overs: Translation and Latin American Literature /(SUNY P, 2002, co-edited with Daniel Balderston) with an updated edition in Spanish, /Voces en off: Traducción y literatura latinoamericana/(Universidad de los Andes, 2018, also co-edited with Balderston). Her current research focuses on Julio Cortázar’s poetry, and relies on archival manuscripts and genetic analysis of both published and unpublished work.
For over twenty years, Schwartz has worked as a facilitator and trainer with People and Stories/Gente y Cuentos, a non-profit that offers short story reading and discussion groups in English and Spanish in community settings such as prisons, shelters, and substance abuse rehabilitation centers.