Brendan Lanctot
Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies
BA, Haverford College, 2000
MA, MPhil, PhD, Columbia University, 2002, 2005, 2008
Courses Spring 2013:
SPAN 202: Intermediate Spanish 2
SPAN 402: Seminar on Nineteenth-Century Latin America
Office Hours: MW 12:00-1:30; F 9-10, or by appointment
Other Recent Courses:
LAS 100 – Introduction to Latin American Studies
SPAN 203 – Advanced Grammar and Composition. (Theme: Seeing Latin America Through the Lens of Photography)
SPAN 306 – Latin American Cinema
SPAN 410 – Contemporary Argentine Literature in Krisis
Research Interests:
Nineteenth-century Latin American literary and cultural studies, nation-building, theories of sovereignty and populism, visual culture, contemporary Argentine literature and film.
Current Book Project:
Beyond Civilization and Barbarism: Culture and Politics in Post-Revolutionary Argentina (currently under review)
This project examines the role of various cultural forms used to promote competing nationalist projects during the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1829-1852). Against the durable notion that supporters of the Rosas regime and its critics professed two incompatible worldviews, as most famously expressed in Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s Facundo (1845), Beyond Civilization and Barbarism argues these competing groups were complicit in inscribing the basic terms of opposition that have henceforth structured Argentine cultural discourse. The side-by-side scrutiny of various cultural artifacts, including canonical literary works, anonymous broadsheets, portraiture, personal correspondence, graffiti, and audiovisual spectacles, demonstrates how adversaries of the period used similar rhetorical strategies, appealed to the same basic political concepts of republican government, and shared a fundamental concern with the pueblo, or people. That is, beyond the familiar dividing lines marked by civilization and barbarism, this corpus of conflicting, contingent responses to the political crises of post-Independence maps in a more complex fashion map the uneven development of modernity in Latin America.
