Rodrigo Viqueira

Rodrigo Viqueira is a scholar of modern and contemporary Latin American literature and culture, specializing in the cultural production of the Southern Cone and Brazil. He is interested in sound studies, labor, popular culture, film and media studies, race and Afro-Latin American Studies. Prof. Viqueira earned an M.A. in Latin American Literature from the Universidad de la República of Uruguay and a Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. His scholarly writing has appeared in Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Latin American Literary Review, and Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana.

His monograph Negrismo, vanguardia y folklore. Representación de los afrodescendientes en la obra de Ildefonso Pereda Valdés was published by Rebeca Linke Editoras in 2019. In this book, Viqueira examines how, during the 1920s and 1930s, the symbolic place of the Afro-Uruguayan population was constructed, negotiated, and disputed through the interaction between white intellectuals, the Afro-Uruguayan press, and the State. Delving into a scarcely explored archive, the book focuses on the production of the poet and anthropologist Ildefonso Pereda Valdés –from the negrista poetry of the 1920s to the beginnings of his anthropological essays in the 1930s– and highlights Pereda Valdés’ dialogue with Afro-Uruguayan intellectuals.

In his current project, Viqueira examines the politics of sound in the representation of labor in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay between the 1920s and 1970s. By analyzing an eclectic and trans-medial corpus of newspapers, songbooks, novels, radio broadcasts, and films, Viqueira explores how listening to, capturing, and staging the voices of workers, as well as the soundscapes of labor, became central in the debates about capitalist modernization in the region.

Courses

• HUS 150:  Indigenous Cultures of Latin America
• SPN 321:  Advanced Spanish Grammar and Composition

Recent Publications

• “The Allure of Modernity: Afro-Uruguayan Press, Black Internationalism, and Mass Entertainment (1928-1948)”. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2024, pp. 127-147. Awarded the 2024 LASA Southern Cone Best Article Prize.
• “La escritura fonoautográfica de Rodolfo Walsh: la grabadora y la disputa por la voz obrera en ¿Quién mató a Rosendo?”. Latin American Literary Review 49, No. 99, Fall 2022, pp. 21-29.
• “La representación de los afrodescendientes en la nación ‘blanca’: el negrismo de Ildefonso Pereda Valdés y las artes plásticas”. Sic. Revista Arbitrada de APLU, Año VIII, No. 20, April 2018, Special Issue “Literature and Visual Arts”, pp. 105-115.
• “Between Offside and Órsai: Uruguayan Soccer, a (Trans)National Sport,” co-written with Soledad Mocchi-Radichi. Uruguay in Transnational Perspective, coedited by Debbie Sharnak and Pedro Cameselle-Pesce. Routledge, 2023, pp. 116-136.