Assistant Professor

Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Coordinator of Portuguese Program

Spanish and Portuguese

Curriculum Vitae

Education

PhD, University of Texas Austin, 2018

MA, University of Texas Austin, 2015

BA, University of Michigan, 2011

Biography

Jessica Carey-Webb is an assistant professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of New Mexico. Her research examines Latin American literature, history, and media through an environmentally engaged cultural studies lens, with a primary focus on the Amazon region. Grounded in the environmental humanities and interdisciplinary, comparative approaches, her work analyzes how race, gender, and ecology intersect within histories of imperialism, extractivism, and modernization. She is the author of Eyes on Amazonia: Transnational Perspectives on the Rubber Boom Frontier (Vanderbilt University Press, 2024), which investigates how race and gender shaped imperial structures in the Amazon during the first rubber boom (1875–1912). Her scholarship spans peer-reviewed research, policy-oriented work, and public-facing writing that bridges academic inquiry with environmental and social justice concerns, addressing questions of representation, environmental pedagogy, and cultural responses to ecological crisis. Carey-Webb previously served as a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she worked on ecological policy across Latin America. Her current research focuses on Counani, a short-lived independent polity in the Amazon, using archival and cultural analysis to explore alternative territorial imaginaries and their implications for understanding colonialism, nation-building, and extractivism.

Research Interests

• Amazonia
• 20th and 21st century Latin American literature and cultural studies
• Brazilian Culture studies
• Environmental justice
• Ecocritical and environmental studies