Unveiling the Sacred in 20th and 21st-Century Latin American Literature

Through an interdisciplinary approach, this collection delves into the interplay between modernity and sacred traditions in contemporary Latin America as represented in its literature, drawing on diverse scholarly and theoretical perspectives.

Alexander Torres holds a PhD in Latin American Literature. His first book, Bastardos de la modernidad: el Bildungsroman roquero en América Latina (2020), comprises a critique of the ontological impact of capitalist modernity from the perspective of the novel of formation, the baroque ethos, and the Latin American youth that sought to build a new lifeworld through rock culture. In addition to specializing in the Bildungsroman, Torres’s research focuses on the contemporary literary production of different regions in Latin America, often with young and uneasy characters who are faced with a disenchanted and hostile world. He has recently published chapters in The Routledge Handbook of Violence in Latin American Literature (2022), Growing up in Latin America: Child and Youth Agency in Contemporary Popular Culture (2022), and Transculturación y trans-identidades en la literatura contemporánea mexicana (2022). Along with Magdalena González Almada and Tatiana Navallo, Torres contributed as a guest editor and author to the special Bolivian Studies Journal issue Geopoéticas del abigarramiento en narrativas bolivianas actuales (2023), whose focus is on the dialogic relationship between motley social formations and the mobility of affects, a determining feature of recent Bolivian literary and cultural production. Lastly, Torres is currently interested in analyzing and exploring various expressions of the sacred in Latin American literature. He teaches at the University of South Florida (Tampa).

Pablo Baisotti received his PhD in Politics, Institutions and History from the University of Bologna School of Political Science in 2015. Before that he received an MPhil in International Relations (Europe-Latin America) from the University of Bologna in 2008 and an MA in Law and Economic Integration from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and University of Salvador in 2007. He received his Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Salvador in 2004. He was Fellow Researcher at the University Sun Yat-sen in China and Full-time Research Fellow at the Maria Sibylla Merian Center, University of Costa Rica. He has worked as an Associate external Researcher at the University of Brasilia (Department of Latin American Studies), as an External Lecturer at Warsaw University (Institute of Iberian and Ibero-American Studies) and as an External Spanish Examiner at Cape Town University (School of Languages & Literatures). Currently, Baisotti is Senior Lecturer in the EBS - Management and Marketing Group, University of Essex. He was also an Academic Visitor at the Latin American Centre, St. Anthony’s College, University of Oxford. His research focuses on contemporary Latin America, from politics and history to literature, political economy and international relations. In addition to establishing international collaborations and conducting extensive fieldwork, he has published and edited more than 20 books and dozens of articles and book chapters.