Graciela Montaldo

Graciela Montaldo

As scholar and teacher, I specialize in modern and contemporary Latin American cultures. My research is focused on cultural institutions, cultural production and the intersection between culture and politics. I published Museo del consumo. Archivos de la cultura de masas en la Argentina (2016, Museum of Consumption. Archives of Mass Culture in Argentina, 2021), Rubén Darío. Viajes de un cosmopolita extremo (2013), Zonas ciegas. Populismos y experimentos culturales en Argentina (2010), A propriedade da Cultura (2004), Teoría crítica, teoría cultural (2001), Ficciones culturales y fábulas de identidad en América Latina (1999), La sensibilidad amenazada (1995), and De pronto el campo (1993, 2024). I am also the co-editor of Routledge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Latin America (2024), The Argentina Reader: History, Culture and Politics (2002), Esplendores y miserias del siglo XIX (1996) and Yrigoyen entre Borges y Arlt (1989, 2006). I recently finished the critical edition of Opiniones by Rubén Darío (2024).

Regarding recent collaborative works, I edited with Agnes Lugo-Ortiz the Routledge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Latin America (2024). I am currently working with Gabriela Nouzeilles on a new version of The Argentina Reader. I also collaborated on the Historia feminista de la literatura argentina (forthcoming) and on volume V of Latin American in Transition (2022). For the Cambridge History of Argentinian Literature I wrote a chapter on Jorge L. Borges (forthcoming).

Academic Statement

My research interests are at the crossroads of different fields. Trained in literature and cultural practices (intellectual history, sociology of culture), I moved progressively through media, cultural, and visual studies. My last book, Museo del consumo (2016, 2021), intersects those multiple perspectives exploring the politics of cultural consumption in modern Argentina. I have studied cultural practices such as tango, circus, and fashion to understand how mass culture reconfigures the social space and rearticulates political experiences.

In my current research, I am working on the dynamics of criticism and theory in Latin American cultures. Critical discourse organized a large part of the intellectual experience throughout the 20th century and I am interested in exploring the new practices that they initiated and how they were articulated with political activism. Focusing on the figure of Ángel Rama, I trace the genealogy of his experience and see how his practice spread throughout the subcontinent. I am not trying to make a history of Latin American criticism but rather a reflection on its construction and power in Latin American culture, introducing, in a mostly masculine discourse, the gender perspective. Since theory and criticism were an essential part of the reflection on Avant-garde and Marxist works, my research explores key moments of this tense relationship

On the other hand, I am also writing shorter pieces about culture of “the clandestine/underground” as a political tool in modern Latin America. I am interested in cultural and aesthetic practices that fictionalize or interpellate something not officially allowed, secret, or prohibited.

 

    Recent Publications

    • 2022: “El Martín Fierro como causa justa.” El Matadero, n. 16, UBA. http://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index.php/matadero/article/view/13543
    • 2022: “Dispersión y poder. Sobre el autor de lo efímero.” Special volume, Cuarenta Naipes, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, n. 7, December. https://fh.mdp.edu.ar/revistas/index.php/cuarentanaipes/issue/view/319?currentJournal=cuarentanaipes
    • 2022: “Martín Fierro. 150 años”, in Orbis Tertius n. 36, December. https://www.orbistertius.unlp.edu.ar/issue/view/643
    • 2022: “Producción, circulación, consumo. El mundo de la literatura.” In Special Volume: “Gatekeepers o cómo se produce la literatura latinoamericana mundial.” Revista chilena de literatura, n. 105, May.
    • 2022: “Latin American Literature and Criticism in the Global Market.” In Latin American in Transition. Vol V (1980-2017). Edited by Mónica Szurmuk and Debra Castillo. New York: Cambridge University Press.
    • 2021: “Molloy a destiempo.” Chuy. Revista de estudios literarios latinoamericanos. May. http://revistas.untref.edu.ar/index.php/chuy/article/view/1076/881
    • 2021: “Las máscaras democráticas”. In Diccionario de términos críticos de la literatura en América Latina. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Digital Book.
    • 2019: “Rayuela: una enciclopedia para rebeldes.” Introduction to Rayuela, by Julio Cortázar. Critical Edition. Madrid: RAE/Alfaguara.
    • 2019: “Visita al circo.” In Rubén Darío. La sutura de los mundos. UNTREF, April, pp 167-179.  https://untref.edu.ar/uploads/ARD%20La%20sutura%20de%20los%20mundos%20digital_interactivo.pdf
    • 2019: “Art and Latin America.” Editor of the special issue, “Art and Latin America,” Revista Hispánica Moderna. Volume 72, n. 2. December.
    • 2019: “Complot y castigo: la condición transnacional de la isla Martín García.” In Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. Tomo LIII, n. 2, junio.
    • 2019: “Lo que vino después (sobre los diarios de Ricardo Piglia).” LIRICO. Sorbonne Nouvelle. April. https://journals.openedition.org/lirico/7885
    • 2018: “Reading Literature, Reading Politics”, Symposium on the Syndicate Lit on the book Acoustic Properties by Tom McEnaney, June-July. https://syndicate.network/symposia/literature/acoustic-properties/
    • 2018: “The Struggle for Words.” Introduction to Nelly Richard, Eruptions of Memories. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, Critical South Book Series.
    • 2018: “La vida, los objetos, los documentos y el más allá.” Introduction to: Vivi Tellas. Biodrama. Proyecto Archivos. Seis documentales escénicos. Edited by Pamela Brownell and Paola Hernández. Córdoba: Papeles Teatrales/UNC.
    • 2017: “Ecología crítica contemporánea.” In Cuadernos de Literatura, n. 41.
    • 2017: “Transnational Intellectuals: Between Celebrity and Diplomacy.” In Journal of World Literature. Vol. 2, Issue 1.
    • 2017: “Literatura latinoamericana del siglo XIX.” Alberto Moreiras y José Luis Villacañas (Eds.). Conceptos fundamentales de la Poscolonialidad.
    • 2017: “Obsolescencia y cultura: la sobrevida de las cosas en la política del tiempo.” In Mil hojas. Formas contemporáneas de la literatura. Santiago de Chile, Hueders.
    • 2016: “Tango: la ficción y la Argentina portátil”. In Catedral Tomada. http://catedraltomada.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/catedraltomada/issue/view/11/showToc
    • 2016: “Lo que leemos, los que nos leen.” In El Taco en la Brea. https://bibliotecavirtual.unl.edu.ar/publicaciones/index.php/ElTacoenlaBrea/issue/current/showToc
    • 2016: “Literatura + Teoría = Revolución.” Invited article for LIRICO. Sorbonne Nouvelle. https://lirico.revues.org/2351
    • 2016: “La elegancia del hombre vulgar: tango, consumo, cultura.” Taller de Letras, n. 57. http://tallerdeletras.letras.uc.cl/images/57/A02.pdf Reprinted in Rubi Carreño Bolívar and Catalina Forttes Zalaquett (eds). Adiós a las armas: Masculinidades en retirada y otros avances.
    • 2016: “Lugones: un poeta en el país de los desacuerdos.” Introduction to Selected Poems by Leopoldo Lugones. Universidad de Buenos Aires.
    • 2015: “Nineteenth Century Latin American Literature.” The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies: A Metahistory of Material Practices of Power. Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Life, vol 3. Ed. Alberto Moreiras and José Luis Villacañas Berlanga. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
    • 2015: “Modernity/postmodernity/ modernization.” In Marisa Belausteguigoitia, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, and Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought: Historical and Institutional Trajectories. Palgrave/McMillan.
    • 2015: “How to Be a Primitive in the Technological Era.” In Matthew Bush and Tania Gentic (eds.). Technology, Literature, and Digital Culture in Latin America. Mediatized Sensibilities in a Globalized Era. New York and London, Routledge.

     

    Courses

    Document and Imagination in Contemporary Latin American Culture

    Women, Culture, Activism, and Gender in Latin America

    Pueblos en lucha: the Agency of the People in Latin American Cultures

    Consumer Culture in Latin America

    Literature + Theory = Revolution: The uses of Theory in Latin American Cultures

    Hispanic Literature in the Global Experience. Theory, Circulation, and Materiality

    Circulation of Objects: Material Culture in Latin America

    Documents and Evidence in Contemporary Latin American Literature and Arts

    Research and Professional Development Workshop

    Hispanic Cultures