Emil Volek is a professor of Spanish at Arizona State University. He also works in Slavic literary and cultural theory, semiotics and aesthetics. He is the author of "Cuatro claves para la modernidad: Análisis semiótico de textos hispánicos;" "Aleixandre, Borges, Carpentier, Cabrera Infante" (1984); "Metaestructuralismo: Poética moderna, semiótica narrativa y filosofía de las ciencias sociales" (1985); "Literatura hispanoamericana entre la modernidad y la postmodernidad" (1994); "Znak, funkce a hodnota: Estetika a sémiotika umĕní Jana Mukařovského v proudech současného myšlení. Zápisky z podzemí postmoderny" [Sign, Function, and Value. Aesthetics and Semiotics of the Arts of Jan Mukařovský within the Contemporary Critical Currents. Notes From the Postmodern Underground] (2004); "La mujer que quiso ser amada por Dios. Sor Juana Inés en la cruz de la crítica" (2016). He is the editor of "Antología del Formalismo ruso y el grupo de Bajtin," I-II (1992, 1995); "Signo, función y valor: Estética y semiótica del arte de Jan Mukařovský" (2000); "Latin America Writes Back: Postmodernity in the Periphery. An Interdisciplinary Cultural Perspective" (2002, 2014); "Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda: Tu amante ultrajada no puede ser tu amiga. Cartas de amor/novela epistolar" (2004); "Teoría teatral de la Escuela de Praga: de la fenomenología a la semiótica performativa" (2013). Included in “Notable 100 Czech émigré scientists encyclopedia” (2011). Commemorative Medal, awarded by Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (1999). Commemorative Centennial Medal “José Lezama Lima,” awarded by Instituto Cubano del Libro (2016). Outstanding Mentor Award, awarded by Associated Students of ASU (1993). Andres Perez-Simon, ed. Despistemes: La teoria literaria y cultural de Emil Volek (2018).
He completed his doctorate at Charles University, Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1970: Doctor Philosophiae in History of Romance Literatures, Specialization in History of Spanish and Ibero-American Literatures, and in Theory of Literature. Dissertation: Dos décadas de la narrativa de Alejo Carpentier: 1944-1962 (Director: Oldřich Bĕlič). He pursued a postgraduate program in Aesthetics, also at Charles University from 1970-1972. His thesis was: Dialectics of the Specificity of Art: Russian Formalism, Czech Structuralism, and Marxism, 1973 (in Czech). He also attended the School of Criticism and Theory, University of California at Irvine in the summer of 1978 (NEH Fellowship; seminars with Hayden White, Wolfgang Iser, and Fredric Jameson).
