Alberto Villate-Isaza

Have you ever wondered what were the effects of the European presence in the Americas and how it shaped the world? My main area of research is Latin American colonial literature, culture and historiography, particularly in the New Kingdom of Granada (Modern-day Colombia) and the Andean region. Other interest and areas of research include social and political theory of the baroque, discourses of Latin American national identity, and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Latin American literature, especially modernismo. My book, Exemplary Violence: Rewriting History in Colonial Colombia (Bucknell 2021),  explores the violent colonial history of the New Kingdom of Granada by examining three seventeenth-century historical accounts—Pedro Simón’s Noticias historiales, Juan Rodríguez Freile’s El carnero, and Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita’s Historia general. 

I teach a variety of courses, ranging from introductory and survey courses to graduate seminar courses focused on the fundamental interplay between modernity and coloniality. I have served in multiple graduate studies committees both for MA and PhD, and would be happy to talk to you if interested in our graduate program.