Professor Pellón’s major fields of teaching and research are the contemporary novel in Latin America, literary theory, and translation.  He has published a book on the Cuban poet and novelist Lezama entitled: José Lezama Lima’s Joyful Vision, and many articles on leading Latin American writers including Gabriel García Márquez, Manuel Puig, Severo Sarduy, José Martí, and Julio Cortázar. Professor Pellón has contributed chapters to The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature, A History of Literature in the Caribbean, the Encyclopedia of Slavery and to the Encyclopedia of Cuba. Monte Ávila Editores in Caracas published the translation of his book on Lezama, La visión jubilosa de José Lezama Lima.

Pellón is the translator of short stories by Horacio Quiroga, Juan Bosch, Augusto Roa Bastos, and José Alcántara Almánzar among others. He also has translated Mariano Azuela’s Los de abajo published as The Underdogs: Pictures and Scenes from the Present Revolution ( Hackett Publishing Company, September 2006); The U.S.-Mexican War: A Binational Reader (Hackett Publishing Company, 2010); Mempo Giardinelli's novel An Impossible Balance, (Juan de la Cuesta, 2010). Most recently he has completed The Shadow of the Strongman, the first English translation of Martín Luis Guzmán’s novel La sombra del Caudillo (1929).  He is currently working on the translation of José Martí’s novel Lucía Jerez.