How does local cultural production respond to global, phenomenological forces in Latin America? How does the digital sphere operate as an expanded territory for writing, reading, and producing culture in Spanish and Portuguese? These are some of the questions that inspire Professor Raynor’s academic work.

Professor Raynor’s scholarship centers around contemporary cultural products, encompassing various forms such as textual, visual, digital, and analog. She acknowledges that culture extends beyond the realm of canonical literature to include fan fiction, social media storytelling, and memes. Her commitment lies in broadening the definition of cultural production and giving a platform to creators including artists, writers, bloggers, and poets who may exist on the margins of her fields.

As we continue into the twenty-first century, Raynor attests to the need to venture beyond conventional and sanitized academic settings. Instead, exploring digital spaces like chat rooms, web forums, and comment sections—often referred to as digital back alleys—becomes imperative to scrutinize expressions of contemporary life, as they offer unique forms of expression. Latin America, renowned for its rich diversity and multilingualism, serves as a fertile ground for explorations around equity and inclusion.

Raynor’s research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Fonds de Recherche du Quebec. Her writing appears in Digital Humanities Quarterly, the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, and Estudos de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea.

Professor Raynor’s current research explores how contemporary Latin American cultural production engages with intersecting crises of public health, environment, and inequality. Her project Pandemic Imaginaries examines how writers, filmmakers, poets, and digital creators depict disease outbreaks such as COVID-19, Zika, AIDS, yellow fever, dengue, and chikungunya—tracing how these narratives illuminate the social and ecological legacies of contagion in the region. In parallel, her work on waste cultures in Panama and Mexico investigates how narratives of garbage, recycling, and environmental degradation reflect broader concerns around labor, precarity, and ecological justice. Together, these projects reveal how crisis is represented, materialized, and reimagined across diverse media and cultural forms.