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