Gavin Arnall
Gavin Arnall is a Ph.D. Candidate studying 20th Century Latin American and French Caribbean literature and culture. His dissertation will focus on the transformation of Marxism in Argentina (José Aricó, Octavio Getino, and Fernando Solanas), Martinique (Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon), and Peru (José María Arguedas and José Carlos Mariátegui). Gavin’s research interests include literature and mass culture, avant-garde poetry and poetics, anti-colonial and postcolonial studies, indigenous studies (especially Andean), continental philosophy and critical theory, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and translation. With the help of many colleagues, he founded the Theory Reading Group at Princeton University, a workshop for ideas immediately relevant to the present, within but also beyond the academy (http://www.princeton.edu/ihum/reading-groups/theory/). Gavin received his B.A. in the College Scholar Program (Summa Cum Laude) and Philosophy with a Minor in Latin American Studies from Cornell University.
Publications:
“Alejo Carpentier’s El siglo de las luces: The Translation of Politics and the Politics of Translation,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (forthcoming April 2012).
“Ocupemos la Utopía: Reflexiones sobre el movimiento Occupy Wall Street,” Consideraciones: Las tareas críticas de una nueva generación No. 12 (February – March 2012), 28 – 29.
(With Laura Gandolfi and Enea Zaramella) “Aesthetics and Politics Revisited: An Interview with Jacques Rancière,” Critical Inquiry Volume 38, No. 2 (Winter 2012), 289 – 297.
Presentations:
“Translating Socialism: José Carlos Mariátegui’s Concrete Universal,” Latin American Studies Association 2011: Toward a Third Century of Independence in Latin America, San Francisco, California, May 24, 2012.
“The Idea(s) of Occupy,” invited presentation for panel with Marina Sitrin, The Unwritten Bargain: Occupy Wall Street, Free Speech and Critical Reflection, The Program in American Studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, February 10, 2012.
“Toward Decolonization: Frantz Fanon on the European and the Universal,” Shifting the Geography of Reason VIII: The University, Public Education, and the Transformation of Society, The Caribbean Philosophical Association, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, September 30, 2011.
“Photographing the Future: Walter Benjamin’s Prophetic Image,” Benjamin’s Baudelaire: Towards a Theory of Modernity, A Graduate Symposium, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, May 3, 2011.
“Julio Cortázar’s ‘Reunión’: Journey, Landscape, Revolution,” World Literature, Comparative Literature: The American Comparative Literature Association Conference 2011, Vancouver, Canada, April 2, 2011.
“An Intervention in Poetic Practice: Roberto Bolaño’s Distant Star,” Poetry of the Americas: The Fifth Annual Graduate Student Comparative Poetics Symposium, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, April 17, 2010.
“Benjamin, Cortázar, and Vaneigem, or, Recovering the Outmoded Practice of Play” Creoles, Diasporas, Cosmopolitanisms: The American Comparative Literature Association Conference 2010, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 1, 2010.
Teaching:
Assistant Instructor, German 210: Introduction to German Philosophy (Spring 2012).
Assistant Instructor, English 305: Contemporary Literary Theory (Spring 2011).
Professor at Garden State Penitentiary, English 102: English Composition (II) - Introduction to Literature (Spring, 2011, Fall 2011).
Professor at Garden State Penitentiary, English 101: English Composition (Fall 2010).
