Anna Tybinko is a Ph.D. candidate in the Romance Studies Department at Duke University. She currently holds a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship for her thesis entitled, “Urban Borderlands: African Writers in Precarious Spain, 1985-2008.” Her research deals more generally with historical constructions of race in the Spanish-speaking world and with fiction as a means of thinking beyond the social limitations of the nation. To read about how the Lab has influenced her work go to Borders & Migration.