Seminars/Lectures

Modern Epics:José María Arguedas, Realism, and the Story of Capitalism in Twentieth-Century Peru

Image of Ericka Beckman
Thu
Aug
30

Ericka Beckman's research focuses primarily on narratives of capitalist modernity and modernization in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin America. Her first book, Capital Fictions:  The Literature of Latin America's Export Age (Minnesota, 2013), studied how literature represented the incorporation of the region's economies into world commodity markets at the end of the nineteenth century.  Her current book project, tentatively titled "Agrarian Questions:  Latin American Literature in the Age of Development," examines how twentieth-century literary fiction by authors such as, Rosario Castellanos, Juan Rulfo, José Donoso and José María Arguedas, registered capitalist transitions in the countryside, primarily in relation to three overlapping processes:  agricultural commercialization and mechanization, urban out-migration, and land reform. 

Cosponsored with the Department of Romance Languages