Professor Jorge Coronado named editor of prestigious book series,” Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas”

Jorge Coronado, Director of the Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program and professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, has been named editor of Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas.

Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas is a prestigious book series published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. This series features cutting-edge books on Latin American and inter-American societies, histories, and cultures that offer new perspectives from postcolonial, subaltern, feminist, and cultural studies. The series takes its inspiration from the idea of the illumination, which the critic Walter Benjamin defined as “that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to someone singled out by history at a moment of danger.” By emphasizing this recovery of the past in the context of a perilous present, the series concerns itself with the historical sedimentation and genealogies of Latin American cultural practices and institutions. In highlighting cultural formations of the Americas, it aims to represent work that not only is national in focus but also crosses regions and continents, encompassing the spatial relations of Atlantic studies, of precolonial or prenational territoriality, and of US Latino and other diasporic cultures.

“It’s an honor to become the Series Editor of Illuminations and continue the work of the founding editors. It offers a way for me to continue to contribute to and shape the field of Latin American literary and cultural studies, to which I’ve dedicated my scholarship and teaching.”

Professor Coronado has two books published in the Illuminations series which currently comprises 47 books. As Series Editor he is interested in considering the intersection of more traditional academic disciplines, like literary studies, with sciences like archaeology and anthropology in the region. He believes there is a lot more work to be considered at the intersection of the humanities with the social sciences and that Illuminations could also productively expand its presence beyond the American academy.

Read more about Professor Coronado’s new position as Series Editor in “Q&A with New Illuminations Series Editor Jorge Coronado.”

Learn more about Professor Coronado and his research on his faculty page.