Elvira Blanco holds a PhD in Latin American and Iberian Cultures from Columbia University, where she was an instructor of record and Teaching Scholar (2023-2024). Her research on cinema, popular religion, environmental poetics, and economic imaginaries has been published in A Contracorriente, Ciberletras, Caribbean Studies, and Trópico Absoluto. Her essay "“Kaporito, el Guardián de la Montaña (Venezuela, 2021): Ecocinema and Identity" is forthcoming in The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Animation Studies, Vol. 1. She is also the editor of Constellation. Latin American Voices in Translation, published by Sundial House/Columbia UP in 2024, and has worked as a freelance translator and editor. In addition to her work at Columbia, she teaches undergraduate courses in Bard College's Prison Initiative.