Jorge Camacho is Professor of Spanish, Comparative Literature, and Latin American Studies at the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on colonial Cuban literature, José Martí, Afro-Cuban writing, the Cuban Revolution, race, religion, slavery, and the cultural history of Latin America. At USC, he teaches courses ranging from early colonial literature to contemporary Latin American poetry and fiction. He has held several academic administrative roles, including Director of the Spanish Program, Graduate Director of the Comparative Literature Program, and Director of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx Studies for the Walker Institute.

He has published 134 single-authored, peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in journals and edited volumes across the United States, Europe, and Latin America, in both English and Spanish, and is the author of seventeen books, including nine monographs, as well as several critical editions and volumes of previously unpublished texts.

His monographs include José Martí: las máscaras del escritor [José Martí: The Writer's Masks] (University of Colorado, 2006); Etnografía, política y poder a finales del siglo XIX: José Martí y la cuestión indígena [Ethnography, Politics, and Power at the End of the Nineteenth Century: José Martí and the Indigenous Question] (University of North Carolina Press, 2013); Miedo negro, poder blanco en la Cuba colonial [Black Fear, White Power in Colonial Cuba] (Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2015); Amos, siervos y revolucionarios: la literatura de las guerras de Cuba (1868–1898). Una perspectiva transatlántica [Masters, Slaves, and Revolutionaries: The Literature of the Cuban Wars (1868–1898). A Transatlantic Perspective] (Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2018); La angustia de Eros: sexualidad y violencia en la literatura cubana [The Anguish of Eros: Sexuality and Violence in Cuban Literature] (Almenara Press, 2019); Representaciones del mal: brujos y ñáñigos en Cuba [Representations of Evil: Sorcerers and Ñáñigos in Cuba] (University of Mississippi Press, 2021); Contra el horror: el cuerpo, la religión y la violencia en la literatura colonial cubana [Against Horror: The Body, Religion, and Violence in Colonial Cuban Literature] (Editorial Verbum, 2025); and Una comunidad de dolientes: el indígena en la literatura colonial cubana [A Community of Mourners: The Indigenous in Cuba's Colonial Literature] (Purdue University Press, 2026). A further monograph, El sujeto heroico moderno: droga, masas, asesinatos y sacrificios en José Martí [The Modern Heroic Subject: Drugs, Masses, Murders, and Sacrifices in José Martí], is forthcoming from Iberoamericana Vervuert in 2027.

His impressive archival research has recovered more than eighty previously unknown chronicles and poems by writers including José Martí, Rubén Darío, and Mercedes Matamoros, as well as seven poems by Afro-descendant enslaved writers. He has also produced critical editions of nineteenth-century Cuban works, including Cuentos de La Habana Elegante [Tales from La Habana Elegante] (2014), Autonosuya, curiosa novela político-burlesca [Autonosuya, A Curious Political-Burlesque Novel] (2016), Mirtos de antaño y otros textos inéditos [Mirtos de Antaño and Other Unpublished Texts] (2018), and Dos norteamericanas en la Guerra de Cuba (1868–1898) [Two Americans in the Cuban War (1868–1898)] (2019).

He currently has two book projects underway: an examination of Afro-descendant literature in colonial Cuba, and a study of Martí's reception in contemporary art, academic writing, and literature.