Emilio del Valle Escalante (K'iche' Maya, Iximulew) is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. His teaching and research focus on contemporary Latin American literatures and cultural studies, with an emphasis on indigenous literatures and social movements, Central American literatures and cultures, and post-colonial and subaltern studies in the Latin American context. He is the author of Maya Nationalisms and Postcolonial Challenges in Guatemala: Coloniality, Modernity and Identity Politics (SAR Press 2009). He is completing his second book, Before and After Genocide in Guatemala: Re-Building the Maya World Through Literature (1960-2012).