Ashley Hope Pérez
Contact Information
Associate Professor, Undergraduate Studies Director, World Literature Program Coordinator
she/her
Office Hours
Please email me to arrange an appointment to meet.
Areas of Expertise
- Latin American and U.S. Latine literatures
- Narratology and narrative ethics
- World literature
- Young adult and children's literature
- Literary free speech and reader rights
- Harms of educational censorship
Education
- Ph.D in Comparative Literature, Indiana University
Ashley Hope Pérez is a literary scholar, novelist, youth advocate, and educator. Across these areas, she explores the ethical implications of how we tell, read, mediate, and interpret narratives. Her recent book of literary criticism, Deformative Fictions: Narrative Ethics and Cruelty in Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature (2024), considers how difficult works of fiction disrupt readers’ attempts to make sense of narrated cruelty, what we can do in response, and how these uncomfortable encounters matter for our understanding of narrative ethics. It received the Modern Language Association's 2024 Matei Calinescu Prize for a distinguished work of scholarship in twentieth- or twenty-first-century literature and thought. Interested readers can access a free and complete PDF of Deformative Fictions thanks to a TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) grant.
As one of the most frequently banned writers in the United States since 2021, Pérez uses her insights and experiences to advocate for students and their right to learn, grow, and access diverse literature. Her anthology Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers' Rights (2025) brings together banned writers to share their experiences, inform readers about the works of literature disappearing from library shelves, and empower them with ways to fight back. Her recently designed course, CS 4021: Banned Books and the Cost of Censorship, fulfills the GE Citizenship for a Just and Diverse World theme. In 2024, she secured a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to fund the Unite to Read Project at The Ohio State University. To learn more about URP events and programming, please complete the URP interest form.
For more information about the epidemic of book-banning and educational censorship in the U.S., visit https://linktr.ee/ashleyhopeperez.
Selected Service
Elected member, OSU Senate Steering Committee (2025–present)
Member, OSU Senate Executive Committee of Faculty (2025–present)
Board member, EveryLibrary Institute (2025–present)
Elected OSU senator, representing Arts and Humanities (2023–present)
Director of Undergraduate Studies (2023–present)
Member, Senate Honorary Degrees Committee (2023–2025)
Member, Project Narrative Core Faculty Coordinating Committee (2022–present)
Coordinating Committee Chair, Comparative Literature Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization (2017–present)
Coordinator of the World Literature program (2016–present)
Arts and Sciences representative, University Teacher Education Council (2023–2024)
Member, Advisory Committee for Executive Dean of Arts and Sciences Search (2018–2019)
Publications
Literature
Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers' Rights (2025, edited anthology)
Out of Darkness (2015, novel)
Literary Criticism
Deformative Fictions: Narrative Ethics and Cruelty in Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature (2024, Theory and Interpretation of Narrative Series, OSU Press). Winner of the MLA's 2024 Matei Calinescu Prize for a distinguished work of scholarship in twentieth- or twenty-first-century literature and thought. TOME provides free access to a complete PDF of Deformative Fictions.
“Navigating Narrative Ambiguity in Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters.” Teaching the Narrative of Mexicana and Chicana Writers. Ed. Elizabeth Martínez. Options for Teaching Series, MLA, 2021: 158-165.
"Learning Unbounded: Emancipatory Education in Daniel José Older's Shadowshaper Fantasy Series,” Children’s Literature 48 (2020): 124-152.
“Images, Self-Narration, and Radical Pragmatism in Simone de Beauvoir’s Les belles images,” Modern Language Notes 133.4 (2018): 1070-1098.
“Decentering Whiteness and Monolingualism in the Reception of Latinx YA Literature,” co-authored with Patricia Enciso. Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingüe 33.5 (2017): 1-14.
Essays on Censorship (Selected)
Foreword, Acts of Resistance: Subversive Teaching in the English Language Arts Classroom, edited by Jeanne Dyches, Brandon Sams, and Ashley S. Boyd, 2nd ed., Myers Education Press, 2023.
“‘Young people have a right’ to stories that help them learn,” NPR.org (December 14, 2022). https://www.npr.org/2022/12/14/1142428557/ashley-hope-perez-on-out-of-darkness-book-ban
“Defending Youth Access to Diverse Literature in the Face of Book Banning,” The ALAN Review 49.3 (Summer 2022): 16–19.
“Resisting the Censor Without and Within: School Librarians as Defenders of Youth Access to Diverse Literature,” Knowledge Quest: Journal of the American Association of School Librarians 50.4 (May/June 2022): 34–39.