María Dolores Bolívar

Email: [email protected] | Office: AL 171 | Phone: (619) 594-6679

B.A. in Political Science, San Diego State University (1981) and M.A. and Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Studies, University of California, San Diego –UCSD- (1993)

Dr. María Dolores Bolívar set off on an interdisciplinary journey as a writing instructor, freelance journalist, and lexicographer. Her teaching career has been about stories, concerns, and issues of the Global South Transborder communities. Bolívar earned her BA in Political Science from San Diego State University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, where she taught Literature at the Global South Studies Department (formerly Third World Studies) as a doctoral Teaching Assistant.

At SDSU Bolivar has contributed to the development of the Certificates in Translation Studies and in Spanish for the Professions. Bolivar grew up bilingual of French and Spanish and she learned English, Italian, and Portuguese subsequently. Bolívar’s past academic assignments include Arizona State University, El Colegio de México’s Women’s Interdisciplinary Program, PIEM-, and the San Diego County Offices of Education where she taught for the Bilingual Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development Program, BCLAD. This year Dr. Bolivar has joined the department of Interdisciplinary Studies 3 D.

Bolivar has been a writer, cultural journalist, and critic. She founded the journal Olas Civiles and contributed to publications and editorial projects in the Border Region, Zacatecas, California, and Arizona. Her journalistic work featuring the county of Riverside appeared in the local publication Hoy (formerly Enlace), of the San Diego Union Tribune.

Bolívar is a book artist, and fiction writer, her book La palabra (H)era, was first-place winner of the Chicano/Latino Literary Awards in 1989 at the University of California, Irvine. Her most recent publications include Río para después el mar (poetry) and Mudanzas, empacar lo que no esté roto (short story). Bolivar´s writing appears in collective transborder projects such as Testigos de Ausencias, cuentos y relatos de la diaspora mexicana, edited by José Mario Martín Flores and José Salvador Ruiz, and Las bocas que daban pánico, edited by Manuel Camacho, Martin Camps and Manuel Murrieta Saldívar. She is one of 10 writers featured at the temporary Exchange Pavilion (San Diego Capital of Design 2024), in the Panama Plaza at Balboa Park (see photos below).

Her academic publications appear in Texto Crítico, Nuevo Texto Crítico, Casa de las Américas, Revista de Literatura Mexicana and the Compilations Sin imágenes falsas, sin falsos espejos (PIEM-El Colegio de México) and Mujeres Siglos XIX y XX (Casa de las Américas.)