Anna-Paden Carson is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Romance Studies at Duke University specializing in Hispanic and Latin American Literatures and Cultures. Her research examines contrasting perceptions of the natural world and its potentially destructive forces among three key groups in the early modern Viceroyalty of Peru: Andean indigenous communities, Spanish naturalists, and viceregal creole elites. Her dissertation, tentatively titled Contested Landscapes: Nature, Knowledge, and Authority in Colonial Peru, explores how nature became a site of negotiation and contestation among these groups, offering deeper insights into the dynamics of colonial power and identity in the region. She is enrolled in both the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Graduate Certificate and the Certificate in College Teaching in order to help her further explore and develop her interests.
Carson graduated summa cum laude from Washington and Lee University in 2016 with a BA in Spanish and a minor in Poverty Studies. In pursuit of this degree, she published her capstone titled "Justice for Noncitizens: A Case for Reforming the Immigration Legal System" (2017) where she argued that the immigration legal system should be relocated to the judicial branch in order to best uphold the ideals set forth by the U.S. Constitution. She then served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Tunja, Colombia and went on to cultivate her passion for teaching by completing Teach for America in Nashville, Tennessee and earning a MA in Teaching. Carson taught in secondary education for five years before returning to the classroom as a Davis Fellow for Peace in the Middlebury Spanish Language School and embarking on the pursuit of her doctorate the following fall.
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