Alumni
Department of Spanish and Portuguese

I am a PhD Candidate in the Spanish and Portuguese Department. Although my main purpose is to analyze language as a narrative tool and as a aesthetic effect, I do not see any contradiction between formal studies of language and social ones. In fact, one of my goals is to show how what we call “literature” is a social practice derived from basic cognitive operations. My research analyzes the role of literary discourse in the construction of indigenous identity in colonial Peru. I suggest that textual debates carried out by Christian missionaries over the capacity of indigenous peoples [indios] during the colonial period is central to the representation of indios as subjects lacking full understanding.