SCAR IVN USECHE
CURRICULUM VITAE
Department of Latin
American and Iberian Cultures
Columbia University 535W 113th Street. Apt #52
612 W.
116th St. New
York, NY 10025
New
York, NY 10027 oiu1@columbia.edu
Office:
(212) 854-5815
http://www.columbia.edu/~oiu1
Fax:
(212) 854-5322
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia
University, (expected) 2013
M.Phil. in
Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University, 2011
M.A. in Hispanic Literature, Indiana University,
Bloomington, 2007
M.A. in Latin American
Literature, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2005
B.S. Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad
Javeriana, 1999
Dissertation
Research: My
dissertation looks at the mining industry and the arrival of the railroad as
two technological innovations whose influence was felt throughout all of
Spanish culture at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.
Socioeconomically, they contributed to the consolidation of the bourgeoisie and
the birth of a new proletariat. Socio-politically, they deeply affected, on the
one hand, the hegemony of the still powerful political establishment comprised
by the aristocracy and the Catholic Church, and on the other the relations
between different regions and the rise of incipient nationalisms. I analyze how
this scientific, economic, social, and political impact was also, at its core,
semiotic, and textually negotiated in the literature of the period through the rhetorical appropriation of three
images: energy, work, and movement. By focusing on the far-from-harmonious
evolution from ancien rgime to
modern symbolization, this dissertation also sheds some light on the
never-ending debate about Spains incomplete modernization or uneven
modernity—understanding it, in part, as a breakdown in the nation
paradigm-shifting process always ultimately resolved in the sphere of
discourse.
Advisor: Prof. Wadda Ros-Font
APPOINTMENTS
Graduate Fellow. Department of
Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University, New York, 2007
– Present.
Translation Reviewer. Center on
Congress at Indiana University, Bloomington, 2006 to 2007.
Associate Instructor. Department
of Spanish and Portuguese, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2005 to 2007.
Teaching Assistant. Pontificia
Universidad Javeriana, Bogot, Colombia, 1996 to1998.
HONORS AND FELLOWSHIPS
Graduate School
of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Writing Fellowship, 2011-2012.
Graduate School
of Arts and Sciences Summer Fellowship, Columbia University, 2008, 2009, 2010,
2011.
Teaching Assistantship,
Indiana University, Bloomington, 2005-2007.
Graduation Project, Digital
Simulator for Process-Variables Control, nominated for best graduation project
in Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 1999.
PUBLICATIONS
Articles:
La
solucin de la maternidad: esterilidades contradictorias en La Regenta de Leopoldo Alas. UFLR 18.1 (2010). Print.
Economa
y crisis de representabilidad en Su nico
hijo de Leopoldo Alas. Siglodiecinueve
15 (2009). Print.
Anhelos
de modernidad en Los pazos de Ulloa:
civilizacin y barbarie como espacios contradictorios. Sin Frontera 1.1 (2006). Web.
Reviews:
El
nuevo capitalismo y la ciudad dual: entre lo local y lo cosmopolita ante el
impacto de la tecnologa. Rev. of The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic
Restructuring, and the Urban Regional Process, by Manuel Castells. Polisemia 1.8 (2009). Print.
PRESENTATIONS
Amores
imposibles: la encrucijada ideolgica de la modernizacin nacional ante la
industrializacin de finales del siglo XIX en Espaa. 14th Annual Hispanic and
Lusophone Studies Symposium – Cultural Conversations: Popular Culture,
Interculture, High Culture and Counterculture. The Ohio State University, April
2011.
Invertir
para subvertir: ambigedad, ruptura y crisis de representabilidad en Su nico hijo de Leopoldo Alas. The Economics
of Literature and the Literature of Economics in the Eighteenth- and
Nineteenth-Century Hispanic World. The MLA's 124th Annual Convention.
San Francisco, December 2008.
La
utopa contradictoria espaola: el espritu territorial y la hispanidad en la
modernizacin de Espaa. Myth and Mythmaking in Iberian and Luso-Hispanic
Literatures. University of Chicago. October-November 2008.
El discurso
cientfico en la construccin de la subjetividad latinoamericana: los procesos
de independencia como ecos de la ilustracin en la Amrica colonial. The Second Chimalpahin
Conference: Colonial and Post-Colonial Remembering and Forgetfulness. Mexico
City, October 2007.
Perspectivas
sobre la influencia de los medios audiovisuales en la narrativa latinoamericana
de finales del siglo XX. The thirty-fifth annual 20th-Century Literature and
Culture Conference. University of Louisville, February 2007.
WORK IN PROGRESS
Articles:
La persistencia de la memoria: historia o histeria en la produccin
cultural espaola de la primera dcada del siglo XXI.
Abyeccin y destruccin de la subjetividad: memoria, ciudad y
excrementos en El sitio de los sitios
de Juan Goytisolo.
Nacidos para ser obreros: manuales pedaggicos para la enseanza de
la industria en las escuelas de prvulos durante la Restauracin.
Reviews:
De lo rural a lo global: la destruccin creativa del espacio cultural
espaol. Rev. of Constructing Spain: The Re-Imagination of Space and Palce in Fiction and Film, 1953-2003, by
Nathan Richardson. Requested
by Cuadernos de
literatura 31 (2012).
Presentations:
Espaa y sus retricas de apropiacin del progreso: auge ferroviario
y literatura de viajes en la legitimacin de la identidad nacional.
Research Projects:
Payasos nacionalistas o nacionalistas payasos: la construccin de una
idea de Espaa a travs de la pantomima en la era televisiva.
Herejas matemticas: Augustus De Morgan en
Espaa o las tensiones entre la lgica y el dogma catlico a finales del siglo
XIX.
COURSES TAUGHT
Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia
University, New York:
Spanish W3330 (Introduction to
the Study of Hispanic Culture), August 2010 to December 2010, and January 2011
to May 2011.
Spanish W3300 (Language through
Content: Problems of Modernity in Contemporary Spain), August 2009 to December
2009, and January 2010 to May 2010.
Spanish S1202 (Advance Level Spanish
Language Instruction), July 2011 to August 2011
Spanish S1201 (Intermediate Level
Spanish Language Instruction), January 2009 to May 2009, and July 2010 to
August 2010.
Spanish S1102 (Intensive
Beginner-Level Spanish Language Instruction), July 2009 to August 2009.
Spanish S1101 (Beginner Level
Spanish Language Instruction), August 2008 to December 2008.
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Indiana University,
Bloomington:
Spanish S105 (Beginner Level
Spanish Language Instruction), August 2005 to December 2005.
Spanish S200 (Intermediate Level
Spanish Language Instruction), January 2006 to May 2006; August 2006 to
December 2006; January 2007 to May 2007.
PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
Courses:
Didactics of Spanish Language and Culture. Columbia University, 2008.
Methods
of Teaching College Spanish. Indiana University, 2005.
Workshops:
Methodological
Developments in Teaching Spanish as a Second Language. Barnard College of Columbia
University, 2008, 2010, and 2012.
TEACHING AND
RESEARCH INTERESTS
The relations
between Economics and Literature in Spains Restoration Period (1875-1923).
The theoretical
and philosophical dialectic between Positivism and Literature in Spanish
Naturalism.
The tensions between Science and
Catholicism in Spains fin de sicle.
The influence
of science, technology and industry on the Spanish literature and culture.
The possible
connections between mathematical thought and the religion-science tension in
nineteenth-century Spain.
LANGUAGES
Spanish:
Native Speaker
English:
Near Native
Catalan:
High Proficiency
Portuguese:
Reading and Writing
French:
Reading
MEMBERSHIP IN
PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Modern
Language Association – MLA
American
Comparative Literature – ACLA
Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical
Studies – SSPHS
PROFESSIONAL
SERVICE
Revista Hispnica Moderna.
Columbia University. Editorial Assistant 2010-2012.
Chiric. Literary
Journal of Chicano-Riqueo Studies at Indiana University. Editorial Assistant 2006-2007.
Indiana
University Graduate Student Advisor Committee (GSAC). Member 2006-2007.
REFERENCES
Prof. Wadda Rios-Font, Dept. of
Spanish and Latin American Cultures, Barnard College; Dept. of Latin American
and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University.
Prof. Alberto
Medina, Dept. of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University.
Prof. Graciela
Montaldo, Dept. of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University.
Prof. Guadalupe
Ruiz-Fajardo, Dept. of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia
University.