Meet Dr. Salvador Mercado

Salvador Mercado, PhD

Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Spanish Language
Literary and Cultural Studies

Salvador served as chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures for three years and then, in 2020, became the first chair of the newly created Department of Spanish Language, Literary and Cultural Studies. He specializes on contemporary Latin American narrative, focusing on the Spanish speaking Caribbean, with emphasis on Puerto Rico. He has written about the uses of the Latin American bolero and other genres of popular music in the contemporary novel. Themes of his courses include popular culture, fiction and nation formation, musicality in fiction, as well as racial and ethnic identity --particularly Latin American and Latinx Blackness. He aims to maintain in his classes an analytical perspective that emphasizes questions of social class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Salvador earned his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park.

See Dr. Salvador Mercado's profile