Javiera Barrientos (Santiago, Chile) is a scholar in Early Modern literature and culture, bibliography, and the broader history of the book, as well as a bookbinder. She is currently completing her PhD in Literatures in English at Rutgers University where she is writing a dissertation entitled Literary Landfills. Transoceanic Histories of Bibliographic Waste in the Early Modern World. Through archival research and literary analysis, her project examines practices of bibliographic discard and paper recycling across European colonial networks. On the intersection of different time periods, geographies and languages, her work traces how colonialism and environmental extractivism have been mutually constitutive in shaping the economical, sociocultural and material ecosystem of the book. As a Graduate Fellow at the Rutgers Initiative for the Book, she manages their bibliographic Teaching Collection, teaches and develops pedagogical material for undergraduate courses, curates exhibitions, and leads workshops on bookmaking and material textuality.

She holds a BA in Hispano-American Literature and Linguistics from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and an MA in Literature from Universidad de Chile, and has completed specialized training at the Rare Book School, the London Rare Book School, and the American Antiquarian Society. Beyond her academic work, she is the co-founder of the Center for the Studies of Pretty and Useless Things, a Chilean-Mexican interdisciplinary collective dedicated to the study of objects and material culture. Her interest in the book as an artifact extends to her bookbinding studio, Notas de Arte, where she collaborates with independent publishers and artists in the creation of handmade books. She is currently developing the artist's book Didactic Materials, an anthology of pedagogical exercises that introduces readers to the histories and materialities of the book. Her essays have appeared in the experimental collections Publicar como práctica (Ograma, 2021) and Habitar la biblioteca (Biblioteca Revelaciones, 2023) as well as in the literary journals Había Una Vez and Transtierros. In recognition of her scholarship, she received the Bibliographical Society of America's D. F. McKenzie New Scholar Award in 2025 and is an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow.