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 “The Welser Phantom”: Apparitions of the Welser Venezuela Colony in Nineteenth and Twentieth-century German Cultural Memory.”
At , 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 España y América Latina; España Contemporanea; and Perspectivas de la naturaleza en España y Latinoamérica 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’ Colony, Racialized Capitalism, and Cultural Memory. . Dec. 2022.
“Saamaka: Protest Mapping and Ecology in Suriname.” Special Issue: Expanding Black and Indigenous Ecologies for English Language Notes. 62.1 (2024) (In Press)
“Ethnography and the Image of New World Indians in German Travel Narratives and Visual Culture in the Early Modern Period.” Former Neighbors? Future Allies? German Studies and Ethnography in Dialogue. Ed. Alina Dana Weber. New York: Berghan Books, 2023. pp 187-216.
“Saamaka Maroon Communities Face Continued Land Threats in Suriname.” NACLA. November 1, 2022.
“Water in the Peruvian Andes: Ecojusticia and José María Arguedas’ “Agua” (1935).” In Chicana/Latina Studies. 20.2 (2021):60-94.
“La representación de los Welser en la historiografía colonial venezolana.” Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia CII, no. 408 (2019):190-220.
“The Welser Phantom”: Apparitions of the Welser Venezuela Colony in Nineteenth and Twentieth-century German Cultural Memory.” .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’ Workshop 2020
- Latin American Studies Association-Venezuela Section- Best Article- Humanities 2019
- American Association of University Women Publication Grant 2018