Ashley Brock, Assistant Professor, Spanish and Portuguese: “Lessons in Dwelling: Critical Regionalist Poetics in Latin America.”

Ashley Brock will be discussing her forthcoming book, which explores the limitations and the possibilities of literature for conveying place-specific forms of life. Focusing on authors such as José María Arguedas, João Guimarães Rosa, and Juan José Saer, who are often celebrated for making regional themes universal, this study brings a new critical lens to Latin American writers who were ambivalent toward their era’s “boom.”  Beyond mere resistance to or critique of the commodification and political instrumentalization of rural topics and types, this countertrend of critical regionalism positions readers themselves as outsiders, pushing them to engage their senses, to train their attention, and to learn to dwell in unknown textual landscapes.