Vicente

Lecuna

Vicente Lecuna is Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at John Jay College-CUNY, where he has served as Chair since 2019. He earned a PhD at the University of Pittsburgh. From 1997 to 2019, he was a professor in the Literature Department at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He has held visiting professorships at Brown University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Rice University, and the Universidad de los Andes. Lecuna’s research explores the intersections of populism, violence, urban design, and contemporary fiction in Latin American cities, with particular attention to Caracas. His work appears in Cuadernos de Literatura, Revista de Investigaciones Literarias, Revista Estudios, Revista Iberoamericana, and Voz y Escritura. In his recent book, A Promising Past: Remodeling Fictions in Parque Central, Caracas (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025), Lecuna examines the cultural fictions surrounding an emblematic multipurpose complex built in downtown Caracas in the 1970s.