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Statement of Teaching Interests and Research

I have kept in mind always that teaching on Latin America or Latin American

related courses (civilization, culture) also implies a dialogue between North

and the Hispanic Caribbean and South America, between these and Hispanic

communities in the United States, and finally with what has come to be called

"globality." This last dimension has become more central to me through my

experiences as a diplomat. One model for such pedagogy might be the work of

José Martí, who wrote "between" Latin America, North America and Spain,

"teaching the conflicts," as the familiar expression has it.

As a teacher of literature and culture, my role is to have my students engage in

the analysis of literary and cultural texts, and literary history and theory in ways

that encourage their own critical thinking. My teaching gives a strong emphasis

to the canonic, especially in 19th century and 20th century literature, but also

extends beyond the canon to questions of testimonio, film and media and social

history. Although centered in literature and literary criticism, my approach is

interdisciplinary. I aim for a learning environment that encourages all students to

participate and contribute actively to the goals of the course. In my classes I

always try to open a space for critical thinking and to the “unthought” in the

novels, poems and essays discussed, trying to integrate, when feasible, the

most recent aspects of my research. In this regard, one of my goals is to

contribute to the process of forming skilled researchers linking the subjects of

my theoretical seminars with the general areas of research and interests of the

graduate students. An example of this was one graduate seminar that I taught

at the Department of Spanish Language and Literature at the Universidad

“Simón Bolívar” in the Fall of 2008. There, one of the main areas of interest of
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the graduate students was gender studies and feminist theory and, for that

reason, I taught a seminar on “politics of the body” covering some of the most

significant theorists on biopolitics and body studies such as Deleuze, Foucault,

Butler, Braidotti, Esposito and Agamben, among others.

I consider myself a generalist focused on Caribbean and Atlantic studies, with a

strong background in narrative and poetry of 19 th and 20th centuries, and strong

interests in Afro-Caribbean, and theory related to the intersections of literature,

politics, and ideology. I have tried to explore some of the less conventional or

non-canonical aspects of Latin American literature and culture and as a

continuation of my work on Aponte’s “book of paintings” and the Haitian

Revolution, I’m currently researching and preparing three books:

a) Ethiopia imagined in José Antonio Aponte’s “book of paintings”:

On the presence of imaginaries about Ethiopia in the “book of paintings” as

taken up by Aponte from Luis de Urreta’s book “Historia eclesiastica, politica,

natural y moral de los grandes y remotos reynos de la Etiopia…”(1610) a

narrative of the “imaginary voyage” genre extensively read by the Cuban

abolitionist and artist. In this regard, I will follow the path pioneered first by

Stephan Palmié (2002) and then charted, in a more detailed way, by myself in

my doctoral dissertation (2005) about Aponte’s “Ethiopianism”. My idea is to

deepen my previous study of such views on Ethiopia as part of a “black Atlantic”

tradition that, in Aponte's case, re-reads and re-appropriates themes from

Christian European “political theology” to use them against slavery and racism.

At the same time, I will attempt to situate Aponte’s views on Ethiopia as a very

significant forerunner in a genealogy of later 19 th and 20th centuries

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“Ethiopianism” as expressed in Delany, Garvey, Dubois and the Rastafari

movement.

b) Maroons and Black Jacobins: The Haitian Revolution in 19th and 20th
Century Literature:
On the ways the Haitian Revolution has been represented in “global literature”

in narratives of authors from the Caribbean, North America and Europe. From

Kleist's “Betrothal in St. Domingue”, Victor Hugo’s Bug Jargal, to Melville’s

Benito Cereno; from Bergaud’s Stella (the first Haitian novel and a “foundational

fiction”) to Babouk by Guy Endore, from Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! to

James’ Black Jacobins, Carpentier’s El reino de este mundo and Smartt Bell’s

trilogy, I will attempt an analysis centered on the problems and potentialities of

literature to represent the historical events that occurred in Saint

Domingue/Haiti. Reviewing authors which very diverse ideologies (ranging from

Romanticism, Liberalism, Marxism, and postcolonial thought) in the context of

debates about historicism, race, slavery and universal values my project aims to

locate itself in the broad contemporary discussion and debates over the Haitian

Revolution.

c) A translation into Spanish and annotated edition of An Interesting Narrative.

Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua (1854) for Biblioteca Ayacucho

(Venezuela) co-authored with professor Luis Duno (Rice University).

Baquaqua’s is Brazil’s only slave narrative and it is also one of the most

detailed accounts of the infamous Atlantic “Middle passage”. A Muslim African

from Benin captured during a war and sold as a slave, Baquaqua lived and

worked in Pernambuco and during a travel to New York with his master, in

1847, he escaped with the help of American abolitionists, traveling later to Haiti.

After coming back to the United States he wrote his memoir, one of the very few
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texts in Latin America Studies through which we can gain some access to the

enslaved person’s perpective.