Giovanna Montenegro
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Romance Languages; Director of LACAS
Comparative Literature; Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies Program
Background
Professor Giovanna Montenegro's interests primarily focus on colonialism in Latin America and the Caribbean which draw on her interdisciplinary interests in German Studies, Cartography, Ecocriticism and Visual Culture. She has also published on the transatlantic Avant-Garde.
Her book was published by University of Notre Dame Press. She is currently working on a book project on indigenous peoples' and maroons' relationship with their environment, including land claims, in the Guianas.
Her research has been supported by a number of external fellowships including Fulbright, the Newberry Library, the Herzog August Bibliothek, the Omohundro Institute, and the American Association of University Women. In 2019 she received the Latin American Studies Association-Venezuela Section- Best Article- Humanities prize for 鈥淭he Welser Phantom鈥: Apparitions of the Welser Venezuela Colony in Nineteenth and Twentieth-century German Cultural Memory.鈥
At 绿帽社, she teaches courses including Colonization and Genocide; Enlightenment and Empire; The Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean; Travel and Exploration; Intro to World Literature; Specters of War and Colonialism. Previously as Assistant Professor she also taught the following for the Spanish program: Grammar; Advanced Reading and Interpretation; Cultura de Espa帽a y Am茅rica Latina; Espa帽a Contemporanea; and Perspectivas de la naturaleza en Espa帽a y Latinoam茅rica colonial. In 2016 and 2017 Professor Montenegro also led a service-learning study abroad course in Cuzco, Peru.
Selected publications
German Conquistadors in Venezuela: The Welsers鈥 Colony, Racialized Capitalism, and Cultural Memory. . Dec. 2022.
鈥淪aamaka: Protest Mapping and Ecology in Suriname.鈥 Special Issue: Expanding Black and Indigenous Ecologies for English Language Notes. 62.1 (2024) (In Press)
鈥淓thnography and the Image of New World Indians in German Travel Narratives and Visual Culture in the Early Modern Period.鈥 Former Neighbors? Future Allies? German Studies and Ethnography in Dialogue. Ed. Alina Dana Weber. New York: Berghan Books, 2023. pp 187-216.
鈥淪aamaka Maroon Communities Face Continued Land Threats in Suriname.鈥 NACLA. November 1, 2022.
鈥淲ater in the Peruvian Andes: Ecojusticia and Jos茅 Mar铆a Arguedas鈥 鈥淎gua鈥 (1935).鈥 In Chicana/Latina Studies. 20.2 (2021):60-94.
鈥淟a representaci贸n de los Welser en la historiograf铆a colonial venezolana.鈥 Bolet铆n de la Academia Nacional de la Historia CII, no. 408 (2019):190-220.
鈥淭he Welser Phantom鈥: Apparitions of the Welser Venezuela Colony in Nineteenth and Twentieth-century German Cultural Memory.鈥 .11.2 (2018): 21-53.
Education
- PhD, University of California, Davis
Research Interests
- Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean
- Environment
- Material and Visual Culture
- Cartography
- Indigenous and Maroon Studies
- Public Humanities
- Digital Humanities
Awards
- Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Suriname 2022-2023
- Newberry Library Weiss-Brown Publication Subvention 2022
- Newberry Library & Herzog August Bibliothek Short-Term Grant 2022, 2023
- Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture 2020 Scholars鈥 Workshop 2020
- Latin American Studies Association-Venezuela Section- Best Article- Humanities 2019
- American Association of University Women Publication Grant 2018