The Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (LACS) is pleased to announce that Gavin Arnall, associate professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, has accepted the role of center director effective July 1, 2023.
Professor Arnall’s message:
It is an honor and a privilege to step into this new role as director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. I look forward to working closely with Academic Program Manager Nestor Barrera, Outreach Coordinator Christopher Jensen, and the International Institute staff; to coordinating and collaborating with other centers and programs at the International Institute under the leadership of Mary Gallagher; and to building upon all the incredible work of LACS’s former director, Victoria Langland. I also look forward to bringing new voices and perspectives into the center and to developing new initiatives, including events and projects tied to Afro-Caribbean philosophy and politics, Indigenous cultures and social movements, and Latin American critical theory, literature, and the arts.
Professor Arnall’s research and teaching interests converge at the intersection of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. With a comparative literature background, he specializes in modern and contemporary Latin American literature and culture. Other areas of expertise include Marxism and psychoanalysis; critical, literary, postcolonial, and translation theory; francophone Caribbean and continental European philosophy; and Black and Indigenous Studies.
He is the author of Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change (Columbia University Press, 2020), the translator of Emilio de Ípola’s Althusser, The Infinite Farewell (Duke University Press, 2018), and the director of the Marxism Lab.
His current book project, Translating Universality: Marxism and Indigenous Radicalisms in Latin America, explores past and present (missed) encounters between Marxist and Indigenous worldviews and practices. He is also completing revisions for two forthcoming volumes: Translation and Universality: Sites of Struggle (co-edited with Katie Chenoweth, Fordham University Press) and Between Revolution and Democracy: José Aricó, Marxism, and Latin America (co-edited with Susana Draper, Brill’s Historical Materialism Book Series).
