Fernando Degiovanni

A core faculty member of the Graduate Center, award-winning author, and current president of the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (IILI), Fernando Degiovanni is a literary scholar and cultural critic who specializes in modern Latin America. His current research focuses on issues of body experimentation and environmentalism in early twentieth century countercultural communities. Drawing on contemporary theory and emerging archives, he examines how avant-garde writers and artists experimented conceptually and materially with their own bodies to address human-nonhuman relations, gendered technologies, and the role of nature at a time of unprecedented urban transformation, mass migration, and rapid scientific innovation in Latin America.

Professor Degiovanni is the author of two widely reviewed books: Los textos de la patria: Nacionalismo, políticas culturales y canon en Argentina (Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2007), which was awarded the IILI’s Alfredo Roggiano Prize for Latin American Cultural and Literary Criticism, and Vernacular Latin Americanisms: War, the Market, and the Making of a Discipline (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), which received the LASA’s Southern Cone Studies Section Award for Best Book in the Humanities. He is also co-editor of Latin American Literature in Transition, 1870-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and has guest-edited Comunidades y relatos del libro en América Latina (2015). His articles have been published in some of the most prominent 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. He has also contributed chapters to major reference works, such as A Companion to Latin American Literatures and Cultures, The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Latin American Literary and Cultural Forms, Historia crítica de la literatura argentina, and multiple edited collections.

His contributions to the field have been internationally recognized with visiting professorships at the Freie Universität Berlin, the National University of Athens, the University of Perugia, and the National Universities of San Martin, Cordoba and La Plata in Argentina. He is a corresponding member of Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and affiliated researcher of the Laboratorio de Investigación en Ciencias Humanas at UNSAM in Argentina. He has been critic-in-residence at the Ramón Llull Institute Faber Program in Olot, Catalonia, and the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Italy. He has been a recipient of research fellowships from the Argentina’s National Endowment for the Arts and Antorchas Foundation, as well as Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities, among others. He is a member of advisory boards of numerous scholarly journals, and has lectured extensively in the United States, Europe and Latin America.

Fernando Degiovanni is the current president of the Instituto International de Literatura Iberoamericana (IILI), the oldest and largest organization devoted to the study of Latin American literature in the world. He has served as Executive Officer of the Ph.D. Program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures at the Graduate Center. He has been a member of prestigious fellowship selection committees, such as the Fulbright Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Mellon-Mays Graduate Initiative Program, the American Academy in Berlin, Chile’s National Commission on Scientific and Technical Research (CONICYT) and Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET). As long-time member of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), he has chaired several award committees, including the Southern Cone Best Book in the Humanities, Best Book in Nineteenth Century Studies, and Best Book on Venezuela. He has also helped train emerging public and digital humanities scholars by serving as advisor to the Mellon Foundation Public Labs program at the Graduate Center.

Research Interests

• Latin American critical theory; modern and contemporary literature and the arts; modernism and avant-garde cultures; experimental communities in Latin America; Southern Cone intellectual history.
• Countercultural intellectual formations; embodied utopianisms; cultural materialism and emerging archives.
• Environmental studies; performance studies; archival studies; visual studies; sexuality studies.

Awards

Book Awards 

• Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Southern Cone Section, Best Book in the Humanities, 2019. 

• Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (IILI), Premio Alfredo Roggiano de Crítica Literaria y Cultural Latinoamericana, 2010. 

Visiting Professorships 

• Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, 2022

• University of Perugia, Italy, 2021, 2023

• University of Athens, Greece, 2019-2023

• Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina, 2019

• Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, 2014

• Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, 2014 

Fellowships and Grants (selected) 

• Emily Harvey Foundation, Venice, Italy 

• Ramón Lull Institute Faber Program, Olot, Catalonia, Spain 

• The Graduate Center Fellowship

• Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University

• Antorchas Foundation, Argentina

• National Endowment for the Arts, Argentina

• University of Maryland Graduate School Fellowship

• Cordoba Council for Scientific Research, Argentina 

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, Ph.D. Program in Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures, 2017-2019 

Editorial Boards (Refereed Journals) 

• Anclajes, 2022-

• Ciberletras, 2022-

• Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, 2020-

• Recial, 2020-

• El Taco en la Brea, 2017-

• Estudios de Teoría Literaria, 2017- 

• Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2015- 

• Conversaciones del Cono Sur, 2015- 

• Variaciones Borges, 2012- 

• Orbis Tertius: Revista de Teoría y Crítica Literaria, 2012- 

Award Commitees Chaired

• Best Book in Nineteenth Century Studies, Nineteenth Century Section, Latin American Studies Association, 2021. 

• Best Book in the Humanities, Southern Cone Section, Latin American Studies Association, 2020. 

• Fernando Coronil Book Award to the Best Book on Venezuela, Venezuelan Studies Section, Latin American Studies Association, 2018. 

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.

• Latin American Literature in Transition: 1870-1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023 (co-edited with Javier Uriarte).

Articles

• “1910,” Cambridge History of Argentine Literature, ed. Alejandra Laera and Mónica Szurmuk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. 

• “Manuel Ugarte: el fin de la quimera y el comienzo de la acción,” Las identidades de América Latina, ed. Adrián Gorelik. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, forthcoming. 

• “Latin Americanisms,” Latin American Literature in Transition: 1870-1930, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 105-120. 

• “Introduction,” Latin American Literature in Transition: 1870-1930, (with Javier Uriarte). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 1-12. 

• “Peopling Latin Americanism,” The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Latin American Literary and Cultural Forms, edited by Guillermina de Ferrari and Mariano Siskind. London: Routledge, 2022. 155-164. 

• “En la cima más alta de Manhattan: Federico de Onís, frontera y mercado.” Revista Hispánica Moderna 74 (2021): 37-46 

• “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, http://www.revistatransas.com/2017/08/04/museo-pasado-museo-posible/ 

• “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

• Cuerpos de vanguardia 

• Lettered Bodies: Politics and Performance in Latin America

• Contemporary 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