Fernando Degiovanni

Fernando Degiovanni is a literary scholar and cultural critic who studies issues related to intellectual history in modern Latin America. His current research focuses on issues of performativity, embodiment and spectacularization in early twentieth century Argentina. Drawing on contemporary theory and extensive archival research, Degiovanni explores intellectual interventions in alternative spaces, such as mass demonstrations, urban interventions, lecture halls, and artists’ clubs. In his new book, he examines the way in which Avant-guard writers conceptually and materially experimented with their own bodies in public venues, and, by doing so, explored questions concerning the right to appear in public and the democratization of the public sphere. The intellectual performances that Degiovanni studies in his project address human-nonhuman relations, gendered technologies, visual and haptic practices, and mobility and disability issues in an era characterized by dramatic urban transformation, mass migration, rapid technological innovation, and changing consumer practices.

Fernando Degiovanni is the author of two award-winning books: Los textos de la patria: Nacionalismo, políticas culturales y canon en Argentina (Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2007), which investigates the ideological struggles and material projects that propelled the emergence of a literary canon in early twenty-century Argentina, and Vernacular Latin Americanisms: War, the Market, and the Making of a Discipline (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), where he explores the competing agendas that shaped the constitution of Latin Americanism as a field of critical debate and scholarly inquiry between the 1890s and the 1960s. In 2010, he was awarded the IILI’s Alfredo Roggiano Prize for Latin American Cultural and Literary Criticism, and in 2019, the LASA’s Southern Cone Studies Section Award for Best Book in the Humanities.

Fernando Degiovanni is also co-editor of Transitions in Latin American Literature, 1870-1930 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), and has guest-edited Comunidades y relatos del libro en América Latina (2015). His articles have been published in the most prestigious journals of the field, including Revista Iberoamericana, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Journal of World Literatures, Variaciones Borges, Revista Hispánica Moderna, Hispamérica, and Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, as well as in major reference works and edited volumes. 

Fernando Degiovanni is currently the president of the Instituto International de Literatura Iberoamericana (IILI). He joined The Graduate Center from Wesleyan University, where he was Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Chair of the Latin American Studies Program.

Awards

• Visiting Professorship, University of Athens, Greece, 2019 and 2020.
• Visiting Professorship, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina, 2019.
• Book Award, Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Southern Cone Section, Best Book in the Humanities, 2019.
• Visiting Professorship, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, 2014.
• Visiting Professorship, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, 2014.
• Book Award, Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (IILI), Premio Alfredo Roggiano de Crítica Literaria y Cultural Latinoamericana, 2010.

Professional Membership

• Modern Language Association (MLA)
• Latin American Studies Association (LASA)
• Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (IILI)

Professional Affiliation and Leadership (2010-present)

Leadership Positions

• President, Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (IILI), 2020-
• Executive Officer, PhD Program in Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures, 2017-2019.

Editorial Boards

• Recial (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina), 2020-
• Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe (University of Tel Aviv), 2020-
• El Taco en la Brea (Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Argentina), 2017-
• Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina), 2017-
• Revista de Estudios Hispánicos (Washington University, St Louis) 2015-
• Conversaciones del Cono Sur (Latin American Studies Association) 2015-
• Variaciones Borges (University of Pittsburgh), 2012-
• Orbis Tertius: Revista de Teoría y Crítica Literaria (Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina), 2012-

Advisory Committees

• Board of Directors, Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (IILI), 2014-2020.
• Academic Board, Latin American Studies Association (LASA), Southern Cone Regional Congress, Montevideo, Uruguay, 2017.

Fellowship and Award Committees

• Latin American Studies Association (LASA), Southern Cone Section, Best Book in the Humanities, Committee Member, 2020
• Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT), Chile, Evaluator, 2020 
• Latin American Studies Association (LASA), Venezuelan Studies Section, Fernando Coronil Book Award, Committee Chair, 2018
• Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT), Chile, Evaluator, 2016
• Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Argentina, Evaluator, 2016
• Fulbright Fellowship National Screening Committee, 2016
• Fulbright-Mays Fellowship Selection Committee, 2016
• Social Science Research Council (SSRC)-CUNY Fellowship Selection Committee, 2016

External Academic Committees

• University of Stockholm, Sweden, Halftsemminarium, 2020.
• Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, Secretaría de Ciencia y Técnica, 2018-21.
• Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, Instituto de Filología, 2011-2012.

Selected Publications

Books

• Vernacular Latin Americanisms: War, the Market, and the Making of a Discipline. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018.
• Los textos de la patria: nacionalismo, políticas culturales y canon en Argentina. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2007; 2nd. Edition, 2008.
• Transitions in Latin American Literature: 1870-1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

Articles

• “Latin Americanisms,” Transitions in Latin American Literature, 1870-1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
•  “En la cima más alta de Manhattan: Federico de Onís, frontera y mercado.” Revista Hispánica Moderna, forthcoming<.
• “Correspondencias sumergidas: latinoamericanismo, performance y archivo en Manuel Ugarte.” Anclajes 24 (2020): 137-153.
• “Henríquez Ureña diante da multidão,” Retratos latino-americanos: A recordação letrada de intelectuais e artistas do século XX, ed. Sergio Miceli and Jorge Myers. São Paulo: Sesc, 2019: 222-233.
• “El desorden de los libros: patrimonialismo caótico y mercado cultural,” El orden de la cultura escrita, ed. Marina Garone Gravier et al. México: UAM-Gedisa, 2019: 223-242.
• “World Literatures, Cosmopolitan Publics: Welcoming the PEN Club to Buenos Aires in 1936” (with Mónica Szurmuk). Journal of World Literature 4 (2019): 1-24.
• “Pasión de juventudes: la Reforma Universitaria y la emergencia de la literatura latinoamericana.” Cuadernos de Historia 21 (2018): 53-75.
• “Un breviario de moral cívica: José Ingenieros y La evolución de las ideas argentinas,” La Argentina como problema: temas, visiones y pasiones del siglo XX, ed. Carlos Altamirano and Adrián Gorelik. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2018: 69-83.
• “Henríquez Ureña: el intelectual y la multitud.” Hispamérica 47 (2018): 3-12.
• “Lectores retratados: Antonio Berni y las visualidades de lo impreso en la cultura argentina.” Orbis Tertius 22.26 (2017): 61-72. 
• “Museo pasado, museo posible.” Transas: Letras y artes de América Latina, August 2017.
• “Opacidad, disciplina, latinoamericanismo,” Políticas y estrategias de la crítica: ideología, historia y actores de los estudios literarios, ed. Sergio Ugalde Quintana and Ottmar Ette. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2016: 205-223.
• “Lectores retratados: política visual, espacio doméstico y discurso de las pasiones a comienzos del siglo XIX.” Revista Iberoamericana 82 (2016): 721-742.
• “Una disciplina de guerra: Henríquez Ureña y el latinoamericanismo.” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 41 (2015): 135-160. 
• “Comunidades y relatos del libro en América Latina.” Orbis Tertius 20 (2015): 115-117.
• “Buenos Aires” (with Fernando Rosenberg), Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies, ed. Ben Vinson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.   
• “Revoluciones textuales: formación canónica y conmemoración política en Argentina,” Tres momentos de la cultura argentina: 1810-1910-2010, ed. Graciela Batticuore and Sandra Gayol. Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2012: 127-152.
• “Mansiones verdes: colonialismo, naturaleza y sujeto,” Entre Borges y Conrad: estética y territorio en William Henry Hudson, ed. Leila Gómez and Sara Castro-Klaren. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2012: 225-241.
• “La constitución del primer canon literario argentino: poesía, capital simbólico y sujeto nacional,” Historia critica de la literatura argentina III, ed. Noé Jitrik. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2010: 177-196.
• “‘Las alarmas del doctor Américo Castro’: institucionalización filológica y autoridad disciplinaria” (with Guillermo Toscano). Variaciones Borges 30 (2010): 3-41.
• “Disputas de origen: Américo Castro y la institucionalización de la filología en Argentina” (with Guillermo Toscano). Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 58 (2010): 191-213.

Courses Taught

• Lettered Bodies: Politics and Performance in Latin America
• Latin American Critical Theory
• Cultures of War in the Nineteenth Century
• Asaltos a la Biblioteca: Scenes of Reading in Latin America
• Hispanic Critical and Literary Theory
• Dissertation Seminar