Division for Equity and Inclusion

Nahir I. Otaño Gracia serves as the Special Advisor to the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion and is an Associate Professor of English. Her theoretical frameworks include translation theory and practice, Critical Identity Studies, and the Global North Atlantic (Britain, Iberia, North Africa, and Scandinavia). Her book, The Other Faces of Arthur: Chivalric Whiteness in the Global North Atlantic (RaceB4Race Series at Penn Press 2025), reveals the role of Arthuriana in the racial logics of medieval Europe through an analysis of the construction of chivalric whiteness.

She has published several articles on literature from the Global North Atlantic as well as articles on the state of the field of medieval studies. Her essays “On hidden scars and the passive voice,” (Ecocide) and “A Critical Subjective Analysis of Objectivity,” (Feeding the Elephant), among others discuss the ways that medieval studies and academia at large have begun to diversify and the ways it has fallen short. Nahir also teaches courses that focus on the role of literary analysis in understanding community and solidarity in premodern literature. For example, her course World Literature I uses the concept of restorative justice as a tool for literary analysis. She is a proud supporter of United Academics of the University of New Mexico (UA-UNM).