Sarah María Medina Pérez

Sarah María Medina Pérez joined WashU Libraries as the Postdoctoral Fellow for the Modern Literature Collection (MLC) in August 2026. In this role, she advances research, teaching, and public engagement through the MLC’s literary archives and special collections. Sarah María develops programming, curricular resources, exhibitions, and outreach initiatives that connect faculty, students, and community members with the collection. She also supports archival processing, increases access to literary materials, and provides research support to faculty and students.

A scholar of comparative literature, Sarah María’s research centers on avant-garde poetics, ecopoetics, environmental humanities, literary archives, and translation studies. Her work examines transnational modernisms in the Americas, with Mexico City as a primary node, through ecofeminist and queer ecological frameworks, anti-colonial translation theory, and the relationship between experimental poetics and environmental media.

Sarah María holds a PhD in Comparative Literature (International Writers Track) from Washington University in St. Louis (2025), an MFA in Poetry (2018), a Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies (2023), all from Washington University in St. Louis; and a BA in Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington (2013). She is also the recipient of a Center for Teaching and Learning Teaching Citation and the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

Selected Projects, Activities & Accomplishments

• Volcanoes, Islands, and Cities: Ecopoetics of the Transnational Avant-Gardes in the Americas, 1910-1950s, a book project examining ecological imaginaries in Caribbean and Mexican modernist networks.
• “From Mexico City to World Literature: Enrique de Olavarría y Ferrari’s Collaboration with Hugo Meltzl’s Global Literary Project,” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, 2025.
• “Ecopoetics and Avant-Gardes: Modernist Experimentation and Ecological Imaginaries in Mexico City,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, 2026.
• Curator of Some Days Everything Is a Machine: The Poetic Practices of Mary Jo Bang and Wherein I Am: Highlights from the Aaron Coleman Papers, Julian Edison Department of Special Collections.
• Recipient of the Born-Digital Poetry Fellowship, the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence, the Global Futures Research Grant, the Divided City Graduate Research Fellowship, and a Graduate Research Fellowship with the Global Comparative Humanities Working Group at Washington University in St. Louis.
• Translator of Marosa di Giorgio’s The Moth-Woman (La Falena), with translations appearing in Poetry Magazine, Asymptote, and Action Books: Poesía en Acción.