Dr. Cecily Raynor is Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and Digital Humanities at McGill University. Her research examines the impact of global phenomenological forces on local realities, with special attention to language, culture, and modes of constructing the self, both online and offline. She is committed to working with cultural products on the margins in order to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within her disciplines. Within the areas of Latin American literature and cultural studies, she has developed an interdisciplinary approach to examining cultural responses to globalization.

Professor Raynor’s book on spatial practices in contemporary Latin America was published by Bucknell University Press in 2021, and her co-edited volume on digital culture in Latin America appeared with the University of Toronto Press in 2023.

Professor Raynor has two concurrent projects. The first is entitled Pandemic Imaginaries and explores how writers, filmmakers, poets, and digital creators in Latin America represent contemporary public health crises—including COVID-19, Zika, AIDS, and yellow fever. The project examines how these cultural responses reveal enduring social and ecological inequalities, while linking present-day contagion to historical legacies of disease and environmental change.

She is also carrying out work on waste cultures in Latin America, investigating how narratives of garbage, recycling, and environmental degradation reflect broader questions of socio-economic precarity, labor, and ecological justice. Focusing on Panama and Mexico, this project brings together cultural analysis, environmental humanities, and material studies to examine how waste is both produced and represented culturally across media.