My published writing participates in several conversations across research areas, such as Latinx poetry and poetics, Chicana/o/x literature, African American literature, US literature (especially prose fiction), and desert studies. My ongoing and forthcoming research is on the use of lamentation in contemporary Latinx poetry, the importance of Desert Studies to Latinx studies and literary studies more broadly, and how the language of coalition gives insight into modes of imagining difference in multiethnic literature that preceded the language of both multiculturalism and intersectionality.
Articles, Essays, Chapters, & Reviews
2025:
Chapter: “Canto Mundo, Undocupoets, Letras Latinas and the Cultivation of Latinx Poetry.” In “Latinx Literature in Transition” series, Vol. 3, Latinx Literature and Critical Futurities, 1992-2020, ed. William Orchard, Cambridge University Press, 2025, Pages 96-112. <https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009314091.007>
Essay: “Social Movements, Institutions, and Multiethnic Literatures of the US.” Post45: Contemporaries, in Mobilizing Literature: A Response, edited by Dan Sinykin and Francisco E. Robles.
<https://post45.org/2025/03/social-movements-institutions-and-multiethnic-literatures-of-the-us/>
BOOK: Coalition Literature: Aesthetics on the Move in Midcentury US Multiethnic Writing. Stanford University Press, Post•45 Series, March 2025.
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Reviews
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Mariana Gutiérrez Lowe, A Contracorriente 23, no. 2 (Winter 2026): 275-279. https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/2660/3911
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Jeremiah Davis, Choice 63, no. 9 (May 2026): no page. https://choicereviews.org/review/10.5860/CHOICE.240676
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Halley Roberts, E3W: Ethnic and Third World Literatures 26 (Spring 2026): 37-38. https://e3w.dwrl.utexas.edu/issues/volume-26-spring-2026/diasporas-and-crossings/coalition-literature-francisco-e-robles/
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Scott Henkel, ALH Review 38, issue 3 (July 2026): 1-4. https://academic.oup.com/alh/article/38/3/1/8761143
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Grace Tierney, ASAP Review (August 27, 2026). https://asapjournal.com/review/review-of-coalition-literature-aesthetics-on-the-move-in-midcentury-us-multiethnic-writing-by-francisco-robles/
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2024:
Article: “The Sense and Sound of Lamentation in Yesenia Montilla’s Muse Found in a Colonized Body.” Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, Volume 8, Issue 1, Fall 2023 (published 2024): 44-62. <https://doi.org/10.2979/chj.00005>
Chapter: “Transformative Testimony and Lamentation: Latinx Protest Poetry as a New World of Witnessing.” Routledge Handbook of Latinx Life Writing, eds. Christine Fernández and Maria Villaseñor. Routledge, Pages 343-360. <https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003273141-30>
2023:
Review: “Review of The Anzaldúan Theory Handbook, by AnaLouise Keating.” A contracorriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America 20, No. 2 (Winter 2023), Pages 305-312. <https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/2331/3652>
2022:
Interview: “Desert Futures Collective: A Conversation With Brahim El-Guabli, Jill Jarvis, and Francisco E. Robles.” Interview by Samia Henni, in Deserts Are Not Empty, ed. Samia Henni. Columbia University Press (2022), Pages 23-48.
Article: “Communal Imagination and the Problem of Allegory in Tomás Rivera’s …y no se lo tragó la tierra.” Twentieth-Century Literature, Volume 68, Issue 1 (Spring 2022), Pages 53-74. <https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-9668897>
2021:
Article: “Lydia Mendoza’s Moving Homelands.” Latino Studies, Volume 19, Issue 2 (June 2021), Pages 164-185. <https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-021-00316-5>
[full text, courtesy of Springer: https://rdcu.be/cl7pv]
Essay: “Protocol, Control, Permutation.” With Stephen Yeager. ASAP/J, 26 April 2021. <https://asapjournal.com/reliquary-for-the-digital-in-nine-key-words-or-b-or-protocol-control-permutation-francisco-robles-and-stephen-yeager/>
Essay: “D’Angelo’s Slow Control.” ASAP/J, 26 April 2021. <https://asapjournal.com/reliquary-for-the-digital-in-nine-key-words-or-ix-or-dangelos-slow-control-francisco-robles/>
Review: “Review of The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956, by Aaron J. Leonard, and Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life, by Gustavus Stadler.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 33, No. 3 (2021): 194-198. <https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2021.33.3.194>.
2020:
Article: “Transformation and Generation: Preliminary Notes on Reading the Poetics of the Memphis Sanitation Strike.” Post45: Peer Reviewed Issue 5 (Fall/Winter 2020), “Formalism Now,” eds. Timothy Aubry and Florence Dore. (~5,800 words.) <http://post45.org/2020/12/robles-transformation-and-generation>
Chapter: “Unsettling Monuments of Chicanx Masculinity in Estela Portillo Trambley’s ‘Rain of Scorpions.’” Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities, ed. Frederick Luis Aldama and Arturo Aldama. University of Arizona Press, Pages 228-247: <https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/decolonizing-latinx-masculinities>
Article: “Jean Toomer’s Cane and the Borderlands of Encounter and Contradiction.” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Volume 45, Issue 1 (Spring 2020), Pages 27–48: <https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlz064>
Essay: “Lamentation, Remembrance, the Body." Post45 Contemporaries.
<https://post45.org/2020/01/lamentation-remembrance-the-body/>
Essay: “Introduction: The Body of Contemporary Latina/o/x Poetry.” With William Orchard. Post45 Contemporaries. <https://post45.org/2020/01/the-body-of-contemporary-latina-o-x-poetry/>
2019:
Essay: “Lamentations.” Killing the Buddha.
<http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/exegesis/lamentations>
2018:
Review: “Illuminating Narratives of and by the Undocumented: A Review of Documenting the Undocumented: Latino/a Narratives and Social Justice in the Era of Operation Gatekeeper, by Marta Caminero-Santangelo.” Small Axe: sx salon 29, Fall 2018:<http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/reviews/illuminating-narratives-and-undocumented>
2017:
Review: “Review of A World Not to Come: A History of Latino Writing and Print Culture, by Raúl Coronado.” New Mexico Historical Review, Volume 92 Issue 4 (Fall 2017), Pages 498-499.
Forthcoming & Under Review:
“Against Emptiness and the Desert Grotesque: Desert Poetics of Creation and Inhabitation.” Oxford Handbook of Literature and Migration, eds. Hadji Bakara, Charlotte Sussman, and Josephine McDonagh. Invited contribution.
“Anticipating Stories of Sex Work: Condemning the Public Woman in Nineteenth-Century American Prose.” Second author; first author is Marie Shelton. Oxford Handbook of American Street Literature, ed. Dennis Winston.
“Afrofuturism: Heuristic or Historical Descriptor? And Some Thoughts on Phillis Wheatley.” Justice in Time: Critical Afrofuturism and the Struggle for Black Freedom, ed. Elizabeth Reich and Ryan Kernan. University of Minnesota Press. Interminably forthcoming.