Assistant Professor, Critical Theory and Social Justice
B.A. University of California, Irvine; M.A. University of Southern California; Ph.D. University of Oregon
Appointed In
2025
Office
Weingart 101B
Hours
Wednesday from 11 am-1 pm and on Zoom on Fridays at 11 am-12 pm or by appointment
Carla Macal is an interdisciplinary anti-colonial feminist scholar dedicated to community-engaged research addressing the intersections between state violence and intergenerational healing.
From 2024-2025, she was a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC San Diego’s Department of Literature. Macal is working on her book-in-progress, Healing Cartographies: GuateMaya Feminists Weaving Transformative Memory across the Hemisphere, which follows the oral and embodied testimonies of Guatemalan and Maya women survivors of the 36-year (1960-1996) war and their production of counter-cultural memory. She is the creator of , an herbalist project preserving ancestral Indigenous knowledge.
Research and Teaching Interests
- Guatemalan and Maya victim/survivors of Guatemala's 36-year (1960-1996) war
- Oral and embodied testimonies
- Embodied transformative memory
- Cultural memory and testimonial literature
- Intergenerational healing
- Transnational feminisms
- Cuerpo-territorio