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, 2014

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 railroad as two technological innovations whose influence was felt throughout all of Spanish culture at the turn from nineteenth to twentieth century. Symbolically, they contributed to the rise of tensions between the emerging proletariat and the political establishment. Materially, they deeply altered perception by changing the environment, and by redefining the notions of time and space. I analyze how this 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 State, 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 fostered by industrialization, and always ultimately resolved in the sphere of discourse.

 

Advisor: Prof. Wadda Ros-Font

 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Graduate Fellow. Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University, New York, 2007 – Present.

Associate Instructor. Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2005 – 2007.

Teaching Assistant. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogot, Colombia, 1996 – 1998.

 

PUBLICATIONS

Articles:

La ciudad abyecta: memoria y excrementos en El sitio de los sitios de Juan Goytisolo. Submitted for consideration to Polis: Revista de la Universidad Bolivariana de Chile.

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.

 El aprendizaje en el romance medieval. Biblioteca Gonzalo de Berceo. n.p, n.d. Web. <http://www.vallenajerilla.com/berceo/useche/aprendizajemedieval.htm>

 

Reviews:

El indeterminismo evolutivo: Darwin y la novela decimonnica espaola. Rev. of Subversive Seduction: Darwin, Sexual Selection, and the Spanish Novel, by Travis Landry. Cuadernos de literatura 34 (2013). Forthcoming.

Rev. of Trains, Literature, and Culture: Reading/Writing the Rail. Ed. Benjamin Fraser and Steven D. Spalding. Cuadernos de literatura 33 (2013). Print.

De lo rural a lo global: la destruccin creativa del espacio cultural espaol. Rev. of Constructing Spain: The Re-Imagination of Space and Place in Fiction and Film, 1953-2003, by Nathan Richardson. Cuadernos de literatura 32 (2012). Print.

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

Historia o histeria: reconstruccin del pasado o desacralizacin de la memoria en Alex de la Iglesia y Benjamn Prado. To be read at The RMMLA's 67th Annual Convention. Vancouver, October 2013.

Forging the Social: The Rhetoric of Industrial Processes in Spains Restoration Period. The Sixth Biennial Urban History Association Conference: The Cosmopolitan Metropolis. New York, October 2012.

Espaa y sus retricas de apropiacin del progreso: auge ferroviario y literatura de viajes en la legitimacin de la identidad nacional. The Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literature (MACHL). University of Nebraska, Lincoln, October 2012.

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.

 

COURSES TAUGHT

Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University, New York:

Spanish W3350 (Hispanic Cultures II: From the Enlightenment to the Present), September 2012 to December 2012.

Spanish W3349 (Hispanic Cultures I: (Islamic Spain through the Colonial Period), January 2013 to May 2013.

Spanish W3330 (Introduction to the Study of Hispanic Culture), September 2010 to December 2010, and January 2011 to May 2011.

Spanish W3300 (Language through Content: Problems of Modernity in Contemporary Spain), September 2009 to December 2009, and January 2010 to May 2010.

Spanish S1202 (Advanced Level Spanish Language Instruction), July 2011 to August 2011, and September 2013 to December 2013.

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, and July 2013 to August 2013.

Spanish S1101 (Beginner Level Spanish Language Instruction), September 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.

 

OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Revista Hispnica Moderna. Columbia University. Editorial Assistant, 2010 to 2013.

Translation Reviewer. Center on Congress at Indiana University, Bloomington, 2006 to 2007.

 

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Courses:

Didactics of Spanish Language and Culture. Columbia University, Fall 2008.

Methods of Teaching College Spanish. Indiana University, Fall 2005.

 

Workshops:

Methodological Developments in Teaching Spanish as a Second Language. Barnard College of Columbia University, 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2013.

 

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 appropriation of mathematical concepts in debates over the religion-science tension in nineteenth-century Spain.

 

WORK IN PROGRESS

Articles:

La persistencia de la memoria: historia o histeria en la produccin cultural espaola de la primera dcada del siglo XXI.

 Nacidos para ser obreros: manuales pedaggicos para la enseanza de la industria en las escuelas de prvulos durante la Restauracin.

 

Reviews:

 Subversiones y heterodoxias de la intimidad en la Espaa anterior a Franco. Rev. of Cultures of the Erotic in Spain, 1898-1939, by Maite Zubiaurre.

 

Research Projects:

 Herejas matemticas: Augustus De Morgan en Espaa o las tensiones entre la lgica y el dogma catlico a finales del siglo XIX.

 

HONORS AND FELLOWSHIPS

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Writing Fellowship, Columbia University, 2011 – 2012.

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Summer Research Fellowship, Columbia University, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.

Teaching Assistantship, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2005 – 2007.

Graduation Project, Digital Simulator for Process-Variable Control, nominated for best graduation project in Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 1999.

 

MEMBERSHIP IN PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS     

Modern Language Association – MLA

American Comparative Literature Association – ACLA

Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies – SSPHS

Asociacin Internacional de Galdosistas – AIG

 

LANGUAGES

Spanish: Native

English: Distinguished

Catalan: Advanced (Certificat de nivell bsic de llengua de l'Institut Ramon Llull)

Portuguese: Superior reading and writing

French: Advanced reading