Lassen Fellowships in Latin American Studies, 2017-2018

Jannia Marcella Gomez Gonzalez (Spanish and Portuguese)

Academic Background

Image removed.Gonzalez is a first year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She earned her master’s degree from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Her  thesis analyzed biopolitics both in its Foucauldian formulation and its contemporary functioning by closely reading Coetzee’s “The Lives of the Animals” and Kafka’s “A Report for an Academy”. Concerned with the human/animal dichotomy and its effects in contemporary forms of life, her work examines concepts that enable us to understand the anthropocentric machinery and to search for actual, current attempts to decompose it. 

Research Interests

In the realm of cultural production, Gonzalez intends to work on the construction of cartographies that trace different strategies to dismantle anthropocentric machinery beyond the academic frame. She is eager to continue looking from South to South dialogues in various areas, including literature but also music, speculative design, and other cultural processes that can be used to attempt dissecting the human/animal distinction and its mortal and bloody effects. By privileging animals, not as metaphors of the human world nor as the critical border in which humanity is upheld, she is interested in contributing to posthumanist critical theory in animalist, feminist and decolonial keystones.

Max Horder (Anthropology)

Academic Background

Image removed.Horder is a first-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology. He received his B.Sc. in social anthropology from the London School of Economics and an M.Phil. in Latin American studies from the University of Cambridge.

Research Interests

Horder’s M.Phil. work explored the rise of hip-hop groups in São Paulo, and the inherent tensions between public security and freedom of expression in the periphery of the city. His current research looks at the institutional roles of the public legal system and the police as agents of ordering marginal urban populations. His interests predominantly revolve around urban governance, public security, and the anthropology of the state and its territory.

Isabela Muci Barradas (Art & Archeology)

Academic Background

Image removed.Muci is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art and Archeology. She holds a B.A. with honors in the History of Art and Architecture, Modern Culture and Media, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Brown University. Muci has worked as a Research Assistant at ANOTHER SPACE, a program founded by Estrellita B. Brodsky to broaden international awareness and appreciation of art from Latin America. She has also worked as an intern in the curatorial departments at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, MoMA PS1, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She was the Editorial Assistant for the publication Julio Le Parc: Form into Action, published by the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Research Interests

Muci's research focuses on the history of photography as well as modern and contemporary Latin American art. This emphasis has led to her interest in examining the status of photographic practices in Latin America that lie at the intersection of the documentary and the fictional.

Paulina Pineda Severiano (Comparative Literature)

Academic Background

Image removed.Severiano received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California San Diego with a double major in philosophy and Spanish literature. As a USCD McNair scholar and Spanish literature honors student, she studied philosophy of race with Professor Michael Hardimon and indigenous literature with Professor Gloria Chacon. As part of that experience, she analyzed and compared two indigenous novels from Australia and Mexico, focusing on how the texts illustrate the government’s attempt to assimilate indigenous and
aboriginal groups through the educational system, and how those marginalized groups resist and criticize hegemonic discourses and
oppression. She began her higher education at Southwestern Community College, in Chula Vista, CA, as a philosophy major, where she obtained her Associate's degree.

Research Interests

Severiano’s research interests include the literary and political construction of indigenous identity through the study of Latin American indigenous literature from the mid-twentieth century through the present. She is especially interested in changes that have taken place in terms of representation and visibility, as people from communities deemed silent gain a literary voice. Additionally, she intends to examine the literary contributions of these voices, in the context of decolonization and postcolonial theory. As part of her graduate studies, she plans to travel to Oaxaca, Mexico to study Zapotec.

Pablo Federico Pryluka (History)

Academic Background

Image removed.Pryluka is a first-year graduate student in the Department of History. He completed his undergraduate studies in history at the University of Buenos Aires and earned an M.A. in history at the University Torcuato Di Tella. His master's thesis, “Structural Reforms, Expectations and Consumers: The Issue of Inflation in the Political Economy of Martínez de Hoz”, dealt with questions of political economy during the Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983), focusing on the government's Consumer Education campaign. A recipient of Argentina's National Scientific and Technical Research Council Grant, he recently received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue his Ph.D. studies. He has published in a variety of research journals, including H-Industria and the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing.

Research Interests

Pryluka’s research interests include modern Latin American history, with a focus on the history of political economy and consumption. He is particularly interested in consumption in the face of income shocks and to assess the impact of income distribution on both consumption and economic growth. He hopes to develop new insights related to consumption from a social and cultural perspective. Additionally, he is interested in analyzing advertising discourses, with the aim of reconstructing the beliefs that have oriented specific behavior, aspirations, and consumer preferences.

Camila Reyes Alé (Architecture)

Academic Background

Image removed.Reyes Alé is a first-year Ph.D. candidate in History and Theory of Architecture. She received an M.A. in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Architecture from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC), where she graduated as a professional architect with Maximum Distinction. A Fulbright scholar, she also received the Conicyt-Becas Chile scholarship, awarded by the Chilean government to support graduate study abroad by scholars with outstanding academic records. She has been an Adjunct Professor at the School of Architecture (PUC), and worked in curation and publishing in Chile.

Research Interests

Reyes Alé’s research focuses on architectural history and discourse as a socially mediated construct; questioning what forms, media, and dissemination channels are deployed in order to formulate a controlled understanding of historical processes and events.