“The Task of the Editor: Conceptual Mapping, Conquest, and Information Management in the Araucana” in Hispanic Review
Aug 2024
This essay was accepted for publication in 2024 and is forthcoming. The abstract is as follows: Print culture in early modern Europe was marked by a boom in information management, with glossaries, indexes, and other reference genres used as increasingly popular and widespread methods of structuring books and guiding interpretation. This essay addresses the relationship between information practices, literary texts, and empire by analyzing an unusual glossary included in early editions of Alonso de Ercilla’s epic poem, the Araucana (1569-1589). The poem, which narrates Mapuche rebellion during the conquest of Chile in the 1550s, has been the target of significant scholarly debate: some researchers argue that the work functions as a justification of empire, while others claim it offers a critical gaze on Spanish conquest. However, existing research has only considered Ercilla’s glossary, entitled the “Declaración de cosas notables,” as a supplementary repository of information, overlooking that this element of the poem serves a rhetorical function. An analysis of the relationship between the “Declaración” and the epic demonstrates that the glossary elaborates upon aspects of the poem that align with Spanish imperial goals. Acting as a guide for readers, the “Declaración” directs attention away from more ideologically ambiguous and testimonial moments in the text, augmenting instead a top-down, retrospective narration of conquest and territorial expansion. The reference materials in the Araucana thus gesture to a symbiotic relationship between editorial strategies of information management in the metropole and eyewitness testimony in the Americas.“Between Bandung and Havana: Emergent Solidarities and the Forgotten Poetry of Viva Cuba” in Comparative Literature Studies 62, no. 4
Mar 2024
This essay was accepted for publication in March 2024 after winning the ACLA A. Owen Aldridge Prize for the best essay in the field of Comparative Literature written by a graduate student. The judges unanimously agreed that essay should receive the prize. From the judges' citation: "Meticulously attentive to historical context and poetic form, the essay expands from its focus on Indonesian and Cuban poets in the 1950s and 1960s to wrestle with expansive theoretical concerns and methodological approaches. From its clear-sighted approach to the unevenly forged poetics of leftist solidarity to its sustained analysis with cross-linguistic rhythm and sound, the essay is a model for how provocative, thoughtful, and ambitious work in comparative literary studies can be." The essay will be published in 2025.https://www.acla.org/sites/default/files/files/Aldridge%20Citation%202024.pdf
“Archipelagic Currents in the Global Novel: 24 Hours with Gaspar by Sabda Armandio” in Journal of World Literature 8, no. 3
Aug 2023
Crime fiction, a frequently translated and highly translatable literary genre, has generated perspectives on the global and the local in ways that shape cartographies of world literature. The Indonesian novel 24 Hours with Gaspar by Sabda Armandio is a case study for how specific texts within the genre can serve as points of departure for theorizing cultural geography in an imaginative mode. Analyzing Gaspar through three spatial optics, this paper considers the novel’s global influences, the elements that fall into relief as local in translation, and – by attending to patterns of movement and contact that complicate place-based perspectives – the archipelagic qualities of the text. By imagining this alternative conception of literary space, Armandio’s novel recasts the contemporary global novel as the product of contact, mobility, and linguistic and material flows rather than sites of static national or regional identity.“Plausible Intimacies: Transpacific Entanglements in Lima Barreto’s “O homem que sabia javanês”” in Comparative Literature 75, no. 1
Mar 2023
This essay analyzes representations of Asia in the satirical 1911 short story “O homem que sabia javanês” (“The Man Who Knew Javanese”) by Brazilian author Lima Barreto. Like much of Barreto’s work, the short story critiques the deterministic categories of scientific racism popular in elite circles during the First Brazilian Republic. However, this essay asserts that the references to Java in the story are not arbitrary means through which to carry out that critique. Instead, drawing on Lisa Lowe’s concept of residual intimacies and Bruno Carvalho’s engagement of cartografia letrada (lettered cartography), it argues that Barreto crafts a fiction of plausible contact between Brazil and Java, revealing transpacific spatial and racial entanglements that categories of canonized knowledge at the turn of the twentieth century failed to manage and control. Barreto imagines Java on the streets of Rio, revealing the tangible closeness of two experiences categorized as different and distant. The essay considers how the plausible yet fictional intimacies in this literary counternarrative conceptually reorient readers toward both the Pacific and the Atlantic.“Ricardo Lísias: 'Não precisa acreditar no que digo. E nem acho que deva'” by Ingrid Brioso Rieumont, Lara Norgaard, Márcia de Castro Borges in Fórum de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea 10, no. 19
Jun 2018
A collaborative interview with Ricardo Lísias, with discussion of the 2016 parliamentary coup against Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, freedom of artistic expression, and auto-fiction. The abstract, in Portuguese, is as follows: "Nesta entrevista, realizada em 2016 na Universidade de Princeton, Ricardo Lísias comenta a turbulência que atingiu o Brasil e sua própria obra. Com a sinceridade que o caracteriza, critica desde o uso de argumentos supostamente democráticos para apoiar o golpe contra Dilma Rousseff até o cerceamento da liberdade de criação artística. Acrescente-se que o fato de se encontrar numa instituição universitária tampouco o impede de manifestar desacordo em relação ao tratamento que certos especialistas dispensam às narrativas rotuladas de autoficção."