Alberto Villate Isaza specializes in Latin American colonial literature, culture and historiography, particularly in the New Kingdom of Granada. Other interest and areas of research include social and political theory of the baroque, discourses of Latin American national identity, and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Latin American literature, especially modernismo. He is the author of Exemplary Violence: Rewriting History in Colonial Colombia (Bucknell 2021), which explores the violent colonial history of the New Kingdom of Granada (modern-day Colombia and Venezuela) by examining three seventeenth-century historical accounts—Pedro Simón’s Noticias historiales, Juan Rodríguez Freile’s El carnero, and Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita’s Historia general.
Courses
SPAN 3011: Heritage Speakers of Spanish
SPAN 3030: Texts in Global Contexts
SPAN 4060: Cultures in Contact after 1492
SPAN 4070: Latin American Voices of Change
SPAN 4080: Discovering Cultural Formation
SPAN 6500: Transatlantic Encounters: New World Discoveries, Explorations and Colonizations
SPAN 8010: Dividir lo dividido: Conocimiento, raza y capital en la hispanoamérica colonial
SPAN 8300: Barroco y Neobarroco: La ansiedad americana se hace global
Research
Latin American colonial literature, culture and historiography, particularly in the New Kingdom of Granada. Other interest and areas of research include social and political theory of the baroque, discourses of Latin American national identity, and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Latin American literature, especially modernismo.
Selected Publications
"El lado oscuro de la sátira. Control y explotación en El carnero de Juan Rodríguez Freile." Hispanic Studies Review. 2.2 2017. 314-326.
“Lorenzo’s Devil: Allegory and History in Juan Rodríguez Freile and Fray Pedro Simón.” Revista de Estudios Colombianos. 45.1, 2015. 21-29.
“From ‘Cuadro de costumbres’ to Nationalist Tool: The Case of El Carnero in the Colombian Literary Canon.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies. 92.2, 2015. 235-254.
“El fracaso de los amos de empresa: las imposibilidades de la modernidad en De sobremesa y La vorágine.” A Contracorriente. Vol. 10.2, Winter 2013, 219-242.
Education
Ph.D. Boston College
B.A. Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia
