Sean Sell

Research

My research focuses on contemporary literature from Indigenous language writers in Chiapas, Mexico, whose work I continue to translate for U.S. publication. After obtaining an MA from San Diego State University, with a thesis that compares Chiapas Maya literature with Chicano literature in the U.S., I lived in Chiapas and got to know several writers who have published work in their Native Maya languages of Tsotsil or Tseltal as well as Spanish. Though my translations come from the Spanish versions, I have learned enough about Tsotsil and Tseltal for those versions to inform my translation choices. I generally travel to Chiapas at least twice a year to further these projects. Currently I am working with Tsotsil author Nicolás Huet Bautista on a trilingual publication (Tsotsil, Spanish and English) of his story cycle Ti slajebal lajele/La última muerte/The Last Death. We believe it will be the first fully trilingual book of its kind, where not just the stories but the front and back matter, including an Afterword by Tsotsil writer Mikel Ruiz, will be in all three languages. 

My teaching has covered literature from all time periods and many parts of the world, and I particularly like putting vibrant Indigenous narratives in dialogue with established texts of world literary languages. 

Selected Publications

Beyond Two Worlds: Jaguar Consciousness in Contemporary Chiapas Maya Narrative. Ph.D. dissertation, September 2023.

“Restorative Indigenous Jurisprudence in Anishinaabe and Tsotsil-Maya Fiction.” Chapter in the book Abiayalan Pluriverses: Bridging Hispanic and Indigenous Studies. Amherst College Press, January 2024.

“The Chiapas Jaguar as Symbol of Maya Resintencia – Resistance and Intention.” The Latin Americanist, vol. 65, no. 1, March 2021, pp. 105-22.

“Borges y la Cosmovisión Indígena.” The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 3, Iss. 1, 2018. https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/tqc/vol2/iss1/1/. 

“Balance and Respect vs. Commodification and Control: Conflicting Values in the Work of Maya-Tsotsil Author Mikel Ruiz.” TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 7(1), 2017, pp. 85-104. http://escholarship.org/uc/ssha_transmodernity.

Rooted/Uprooted: Identity in Chiapas Mayan and Mexican-American Literature (master’s thesis), San Diego State University, Fall 2012.

Translations

In process: Ti slajebal lajele/La última muerte/The Last Death, by Nicolás Huet Bautista. The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. Short story collection to be published trilingually in Tsotsil, Spanish and English.

“The Word and Memory/Lo’ilajel ta sbatel osil/A Dialogue in Time,” contribution by Manuel Bolom Pale to In the land of the Lacandon: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism in 1930s France and Mexico by Richard Ivan Jobs and Steven Van Wolputte from McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025.

Kidnapped to the Underworld: Memories of Xibalba, by Víctor D. Montejo. University of Arizona Press, Sun Tracks series, August 2024, from Secuestro a Ultratumba, novel published in Spanish by Windmills Editions, 2020.

Ch’ayemal nich’nabiletik / Los hijos errantes / The Errant Children by Mikel Ruiz. SUNY Press, May 2023. Short novel published bilingually (Tsotsil and Spanish) in Mexico by Centro Estatal de Lenguas, Arte y Literatura Indígenas (CELALI), 2014.

Editor and translator. Chiapas Maya Awakening, Collected Poems and Short Stories. Oklahoma University Press, January 2017.