Silvia Spitta
Professor
Appointments
Robert E. Maxwell 1923 Professor of Arts and Sciences
Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature
Area of Expertise
Contemporary Latin American and LatinX Studies,
Photography and Archives,
Material and Visual Culture,
Border Writing and Culture,
Indigenismo,
Hemispheric Americas Studies
Biography
My research centers on Latin American and Latinx material and visual culture, border culture, photography, and archives. In the past years I started to colaborate with Andean photography archives to digitize, preserve, and exhibit their holdings. I curated a city-wide exhibition of indigenous Martin Chambi's works in Cusco in 2014 and in 2019 those of Baldomero Alejos in Ayacucho, Peru where the Shining Path arose. I am currently co-editing the war photographs of Oscar Medrano and Vera Lentz for two major publications of their works.
Education
Ph.D. University of Oregon
M.A. University of Oregon
B.A. University of California at San Diego
Taught Courses
Publications
Against Ruins: El Cusco de Martín Chambi. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. (NYC: Hemi Press 2020).
Del archivo a las calles. El Cusco de Martín Chambi. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. Trans. Catalina Arango (NYC: Hemi Press 2021).
Misplaced Objects: Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas (Houston: University of Texas Press, 2009).
--Winner of the 2010 Institute for Humanities Research Transdisciplinary Book Award at Arizona State University.
Between Two Waters: Narratives of Transculturation in Latin America. Houston: Rice University Press, 1995. (Paperback edition: College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2006).
Des/Memorias: Prácticas y discursos mnemónicos en las Américas. With Adriana López-Labourdette and Valeria Wagner (Barcelona: Linkgua: 2016).
The Americas, Otherwise. Guest Editor with Lois Zamora. Comparative Literature journal. 61.3 (Summer 2009).
Más allá de la ciudad letrada: Crónicas y vivencias urbanas. Co-edited with Boris Muñoz. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, Biblioteca de América, 2003.
"Lima the Horrible: The Cultural Politics of Theft." PMLA (January 2007).
Contact