José Sánchez Vera is a Ph.D. Candidate at Tulane University’s Spanish and Portuguese Department. His research focuses on contemporary Mexican and Central American Literature taking the interdisciplinary point of view of ecocriticism. His dissertation explores how Mexico City’s ecological crisis and its synergy with the emergence of environmentalism during the 1970s, marks a pivotal moment in the country’s cultural history that radically changed the way artists represented the urban landscape and generated a shift towards activism. While in residence, he worked towards completing his dissertation.