Pedro García-Caro
Assistant Professor of Spanish
Contact info:
Office: FR 407
Office Hour: on leave this term, by appt. only
Phone: 6-5813
pgcaro@uoregon.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Homepage: http://uoregon.academia.edu/PedroGarciaCaro
Degrees, years, and locations:
- PhD, King's College London, University of London, 2004
- MA, University College London, University of London, 1997
- BA (Hons), University of Surrey, Roehampton, 1996
- Licenciatura en filosofía y letras (Filología Moderna), Universidad de Murcia, 1995
Research and teaching interests:
I studied my first degree in my native Spain where I was immediately drawn toward comparative literary studies, in particular to the literary traditions of Latin America, the US, Britain, and Spain. I did all my graduate work in the UK on issues of nationalism and literary approaches to history, and for my PhD I concentrated on the literatures of Mexico and the US from the 19th to the 20th century. My Doctoral dissertation was entitled "Dismantling the Nation: History as Satire in the Works of Carlos Fuentes and Thomas Pynchon." In it, I looked at the ways in which these two novelists from clearly different traditions had dealt with official and unofficial histories, and how they were critically engaged with the processes of myth-making that take place in the construction of nationalist discourses. Mexican and American nationalisms are two very interesting and complex cultural discourses whose excesses and contradictions are best understood through a comparatist analysis. I am still currently engaged researching the relations between nationalist discourse and the discourses of progress and modernity as seen by intellectuals and writers in Latin America, the US, and Spain. Intellectual and literary discussions of Hispanidad, Mexicanidad, and Americanness are very often part of the syllabi in the classes I teach both at the undergraduate and the graduate level. I have recently published several articles on the ways in which Spanish writers portrayed Latin America, and Latin American nationalisms, after independence (from the early 19th Century to the 1930s).
Out of my first area of research, the contradictory relations between nationalism and modernity, a second new area has emerged in my latest research: the narratives and literary debates that deal with the industrial and mineral exploitation of the Americas. The literature of mining is a sizable corpus of texts that stage larger debates such as internationalization (of capital as well as labor), globalization, ecology and nature, human exploitation, racism and slavery, and the central issue of national property over the land and access to natural resources through nationalization or through privatization. Concentrating mainly on the post-colonial period, I have already identified an important corpus of literary and cultural texts (including films, songs, and paintings) that address the role of mining in the construction of independent and modern societies in the Americas. I am currently revising a piece on the Gold Rush and the process of expropriation and reclaiming of mineral properties on the US-Mexican border in the mid-nineteenth Century and the folk stories that developed around those debates.
Courses taught:
- RL623 Colonial Skins, Independent Acts: Postcolonial Literatures of the Romance World.
- SPAN490/590 Social Change, the Avant-Garde and the Mexican Revolution.
- COLT407/507 Undermining Empire: Novel Nations and the Americas.
- RL410/510 Touring the Other Side: Literatures of the US-Mexican Border.
- SPAN407/507 Naturalisms: the Literary Ecologies of the Social World.
- SPAN407 Nation against People: Contemporary Chilean Literature.
- SPAN407 La patria contra el pueblo: Nationalism and Narratives of Violence in 20th Century Latin America (from Chile to California).
- SPAN407-507 Post-Colonial Spanish-American Relations.
- SPAN407 A Neo-Colonial Gaze? The Americas in Spanish Literature 1808-2003.
- SPAN333 Introduction to Spanish Narrative: One Hundred Years of Solitude.
- SPAN328 US Hispanic Literature.
- SPAN319 Survey 19th-20th Century Latin American Literature.
Research & Publications
Forthcoming:
"España, última colonia de sí misma: la justicia en el exilio." L'exil espagnol dans les Amériques. Amiens: Centre d'Études Hispaniques D'Amiens (CEHA), Spring 2009.
“Noticias de Tierra Caliente: Reyes y Valle Inclán, Revolución Mexicana y Neocolonialismo español en el Madrid de Primo de Rivera.” Actas del IV Congreso Transatlántico, México: Cátedra Alfonso Reyes, 2010.
Work in Progress:
After the Nation: Post-National History as Satire in the Works of Thomas Pynchon and Carlos Fuentes. Book manuscript currently under revision.
La verdad sobre el caso José Antonio Primo de Rivera, memorias del juez instructor. Introduction and edition. Book manuscript currently under revision.
Undermining Empire: Mining Literature and the Aesthetics of Natural Determination. This is a book-length project, two chapters are currently underway.
Publications:
“Entre familiaridad y exotismo: La vuelta al mundo en la Numancia, un episodio (trans)nacional de Benito Pérez Galdós.” “España en armas: Culture of Wars in the Iberian Peninsula” Antonio Gómez López-Quiñones, guest editor, Vanderbilt e-Journal of Luso-Hispanic Studies, 5 (2009).
“La nueva izquierda y la agonía del nacionalismo mexicano en La muerte de Artemio Cruz.” Alma América. In honorem Victorino Polo. Vol. I. Eds. Vicente Cervera Salinas y María Dolores Adsuar. (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 2008).
“Exorcising the Lettered City: The Literature of the Villista Revolution. A Review of Max Parra’s Writing Pancho Villa’s Revolution.” A Contracorriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America 5: 1 (2007): 215-227.
Entries: “Wring the Swan’s Neck,” 83; “Spanish Civil War,” 266; “Rosario Castellanos,” 355; “Carlos Fuentes,” 460-1; “Luis Valdez,” 489; “Borderlands/La frontera,” 651; “The Ages of Lulú,” 672. Little Black Book of Books. Ed. Lucy Daniel. (London: Cassell, 2007).
“Review of Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the US by Manuel G. Gonzales.” Comparative American Studies: An International Journal, 2: 2 (2004): 252-4.
“‘Anaqueles Caseros’: Entrevista a Unai Elorriaga.” Ciberletras, 9 (July 2003): http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras/v09/garcia-caro.html
“Lujuria Roja: Aub visto por Ripstein.” Ciberletras, 10 (December 2003):
Thomas Pynchon: Reading from the Margins, edited by Niran Abbas (Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003). Assistant editor.
“Behind the Canvas: The Role of Paintings in Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton and Arturo Pérez Reverte’s The Flanders Panel.” Anne Mullen and Emer O’Beirne (ed.) Crime Scenes: Detective Narratives in European Culture since 1945. (Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2000), 160-170.
“Under Western Eyes: D.H. Lawrence’s Mexico.” Pere Gallardo and Enric Llurda (ed.) Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference of AEDEAN. (Lleida: Editions de la Universitat de Lleida, 2000), 281-286.