Fields of interest

Contemporary Latin American Literature and Culture, Literary Theory, Cultural and Political Theory.

Curriculum Vitae

I’m Argentinian and Belgian – Argentinian by birth and culture, Belgian by chance -, and moved to Louvain (Belgium) in 1976 after the military coup d’état. I worked at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven as a teaching assistent of Spanish and Latin American Literature. I received my Phd. In Romance Literatures in 1985 at the K.U.Leuven with a thesis about Terra Nostra, Carlos Fuentes’ monumental novel. I obtained a tenured position as an assistant professor at the same University in 1988. From 1995 to 1998 I was an associate professor, successively at the Université Catholique de Louvain and at Leiden University. From January 1998 until now, I am Full Professor of Latin American Languages and Literatures at Leiden University.

English CV

CV en Español

Teaching Experience

I taught Latin American literature and literary theory at all levels (bachelor, master, research master) at all three universities, from general courses (Latin American Literatures and Cultures of the XX and XXI centuries) to more specific ones (Literary magazines, Jorge Luis Borges, Melodrama, Popular Genres), and from methodological courses (rhetoric, semiotics, narratology, discourse analysis), to theoretical seminars in the Research Master and Phd curriculum (Borges and Popular Genres, Literary Historiography, Literary Magazines of Latin America, Hybrid Cultures, The Place of the Political). I directed more than 200 dissertations at the undergraduate and graduate levels (bachelor, master, and research master). I also supervised 12 PhD. dissertations, and am currently directing three more in progress.

Research

I always believe that every new book or article I write represents a fresh start – only to discover, afterwards, that what I’ve written is just one more variation on what clearly is my theme, the power of forms: genres, images, stereotypes, clichés, proverbs, fictions. It is an issue of both aesthetical and political importance: if one no longer believes in representation, what is the impact of words, images, scenes, and stories? I have investigated this theme in various projects, with different materials (cultural magazines, novels, plays), with various methodologies (rhetoric, narratology, discourse analysis, cinematic praxis, theatrical and performance techniques), and with a variety of theoretical approaches (literary theory, semiotics, cultural analysis, philosophy, and psychoanalysis). Today, in a globalized and neoliberal world, the forms that seem to be reappearing are those of fascism, which makes the issue ever more urgent.

Administrative Experience (Selection)

• Chair of the Department of Languages and Cultures of Latin America. Leiden University (2000-2006).
• Director of the sections of Languages (Spanish and Portuguese), Latin American Linguistics and Latin American Literature. Department of Latin American Studies, Leiden University (1997-2015).
• Directory Board. Department of Latin American Studies (former Languages and Cultures of Latin America), Leiden University (1997-2015).
• Chair of the Department of Romance Literatures, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (1992-1995).
• Member of the External Evaluation Committee. Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (ICOG), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands (2010).
• External evaluator. Erasmus Mundus Literature and Culture Studies Masters in Crossways in Cultural Narratives (Université de Perpignan, France; University of Saint Andrews, Great Britain; University of Sheffield, Great Britain; Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Italy; Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal; University Iberoamericana, México; Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos, Argentine) (2015-2018).

Ph.D. Supervisions

• Luciana Sastre. La palabra (im)propia. Narración de la juventud en la Argentina de poscrisis. Leiden University. Leiden University, 26 June 2012.
• Daniel de Souza Leão Vieira. A Paisagem Política da Nova Holanda em Frans Post: o Imaginário do Brasil na Cultura Visual Holandesa, 1637-1669. Leiden University, 27 October 2010.
• Ana Amado. La imagen justa. Cine argentino y política (1980-2009). Leiden University, 10 June 2008.
• Gabriel Inzaurralde. La ciudad violenta y su memoria. Leiden University, 11 September 2007.
• Adriana Churampi Ramírez. Heraldos del Pachakuti. La pentalogía de Manuel Scorza. Leiden University, 23 June 2004.
• Nanne Timmer. Y los sueños, sueños son. Sujeto y representación en tres novelas cubanas de los noventa. Leiden University, 22 June 2004.
• Kristian S. van Haesendonck. ¿Encanto o espanto? Identidad y nación en la novela puertorriquena actual. Leiden University, 2 June 2004.
• Patricio Geli. Mirarse en la periferia. Imágenes de América Latina en la prensa socialista en tiempos de la II Internacional. Leiden University, 30 June 2003.
• Rubén Lozano Herrera. José Juan Tablada en Nueva York: búsqueda y hallazgos en la crónica. Leiden University, 13 June 2000.
• Yasmine-Sigrid Vandorpe. Los senderos que se cruzan y se bifurcan. Análisis discursivo de cinco revistas culturales venezolanas (1958-1961). Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 22 September 1997.
• Geneviève Fabry. Estrategias de lectura y personaje en la novelística de Manuel Puig. Université Catholique de Louvain, 10 February 1996.
• Carlos Eduardo Schmidt Capela. A farsa como metodo (a produçao macarronica de Juo Bananere nas revistas O Pirralho, O Queixoso e A Vespa, 1911-1917). Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 9 February 1996.

Selected publications

“Resonancias y ocupación: la cuestión del ‘arte fuera de sí’ en Spam, de Rafael Spregelburd y Federico Zypce”. Cuadernos de Literatura 40 (Jul.-Dec. 2016): 141-154: https://revistas.javeriana.edu.co/index.php/cualit/article/view/17254 (19/11/2016).

Imágenes y realismos en América Latina (edited with Miguel Caballero Vázquez and Christina Soto van der Plas). Leiden: Almenara, 2014.

“Mesuras y desmesuras. Bizarra, de Rafael Spregelburd”. Pensamiento de los confines 28-29 (2012): 269-277.

“Humano, implacablemente humano. Dichosos los que lloran, de Ángel Santiesteban Prats”. Hispamérica: revista de literatura XL.118 (2011): 31-44.

“La invención de la asimetría: Las columnas de María Moreno en Babel, revista de libros (1988-1989)”. MORA: revista del Instituto interdisciplinario de estudios de género 17.2 (2011): https://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1853-001X2011000200005 (15/08/2016).

“El efecto Duchamp”. Orbis Tertius XIV.15 (2009): https://www.orbistertius.unlp.edu.ar/article/download/OTv14n15a01/5000 (15/08/2016).

 “El nombre de la risa. Historia y experiencia en Cómo me reí de César Aira”. In: Eugenia Houvenhagel and Ilse Logie (eds.), Alianzas entre historia y ficción. Geneve: Droz, 2009: 371-380.

 “Vidas sin historias. Para una semiótica del autorretrato literario”. Crítica Cultural 2.1 (2007): https://www.portaldeperiodicos.unisul.br/index.php/Critica_Cultural/article/view/96 (15/08/2016).

 “Literary periodicals of the 1960’s: proposals for re-reading”. In: Mario J. Valdés and Djelal Kadir (eds.), Literary Cultures of Latin America: A Comparative History. Volume 2: Institutional Modes and Cultural Modalities. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2004: 108-118.

“Dissenting mildly. A teacher as a journalist”. Semiotica (Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies/Revue de L’Association Internationale de Sémiotique) 140.1-4 (2002): 181-195.

Un teatro de la memoria: análisis de Terra Nostra, de Carlos Fuentes. Buenos Aires: Albero-Vergara/Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1991.

Activities