Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures; Director, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
About
Languages: English, Spanish, French; working knowledge of Quechua, Portuguese, Italian, German
Affiliations: Romance Languages and Literatures
Research and Teaching interests:
My research and teaching interests converge at the intersection of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. With a background in Comparative Literature, I specialize in modern and contemporary Latin American literature and culture. Other areas of expertise include Marxism and psychoanalysis; critical, literary, postcolonial, and translation theory; francophone Caribbean and continental European philosophy; and Black and Indigenous Studies.
My first book, Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change (Columbia University Press, 2020), sheds light on a persistent but often latent division in Frantz Fanon's writings, a subtle internal struggle between two modes of thinking about change. I argue that there are two Fanons: a dominant Fanon who conceives of change as a dialectical process of becoming and a subterranean Fanon who experiments with an even more explosive theory of transformation. To develop this argument, I offer a close and symptomatic reading of Fanon's entire oeuvre, from cannonical texts like Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth to his psychiatric papers and recently published materials, including his play, Parallel Hands.
My next book, Translating Universality: Marxism and Indigenous Radicalisms in Latin America, explores past and present (missed) encounters between Marxist and indigenous worldviews and practices. Key figures for this study include José Carlos Mariátegui, José María Arguedas, Álvaro García Linera, Raquel Gutiérrez, Fernanda Navarro, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, and Subcomandante Marcos.
I am the co-editor of two forthcoming volumes: Translation and Universality: Sites of Struggle (with Katie Chenoweth, Fordham University Press) and Between Revolution and Democracy: José Aricó, Marxism, and Latin America (with Susana Draper, Brill’s Historical Materialism Book Series). I am the translator of Emilio de Ípola’s Althusser, The Infinite Farewell (Duke University Press, 2018).
I have served on the Executive Committee for the Modern Language Association’s Forum on Marxism, Literature, and Society (2017-2022), and I am the faculty mentor of the Marxisms Collective, a Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop. I am also the director of the Marxism Lab, which produces collaborative research on the history and actuality of Marxist theory and practice.
Recent courses:
French 444 / Spanish 445: Black Radical Imagination
French 444 / Spanish 445: Comparative Marxism
Romance Languages 498: Cultures of Revolution and Revolutions of Culture
Spanish 437: Philosophies of Translation
Spanish 488: Left Politics and Indigenous Movements
Spanish 881: Fanon and Fanonisms
Spanish 855: Marxism from Marx to Marcos
Recent Publications:
Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change (Columbia University Press, 2020).
"The Many Tasks of the Marxist Translator: Approaching Marxism as/in/with Translation from Antonio Gramsci to the Zapatistas," Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory 30, No. 1 (February 2022): 99-132.
"Latin American Marxisms: Reading José Carlos Mariátegui and José Aricó Today," Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 29, No. 3 (January 2021): 1-11.
"The Missed Encounter of Turupukllay: Marxism, Indigenous Communities, and Andean Culture in Yawar fiesta," Radical Americas 5, No. 1 (2020): 1-16.
"Remembering the Sixties: On Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch and Time," Modern Language Notes: Spanish Issue 134, No. 2 (March 2019): 360-381.
