About
I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, specializing in modern and contemporary Latin American and Indigenous culture and theory.
My research and teaching focus on Andean and Mexican culture and politics, Marxism and psychoanalysis, and the relationship between colonialism, racism, and capitalism.
At Michigan, I also earned both a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics and an M.A. in Philosophy, through which I developed an interest in the history and philosophy of science and technology, postcolonial and feminist science studies, and the ways these fields can shape and be shaped by current debates within Latin American Studies.
My current project, Theory of the Encounter of Practices: Science, Art, and Politics in Latin America, investigates how scientific ideas are taken up and transformed by artistic and political practices in the region. I examine two canonical case studies in the long 20th century: (1) the philosophical and political writings of José Carlos Mariátegui as well as the avant-garde magazine Amauta in Perú and (2) the communiques of Subcomandante Marcos (Galeano) as well as the artistic production of indigenous Zapatista communities of Southern México. Alongside these two case studies, I develop a philosophical theory of the encounter of practices that transforms how we conceptualize science and its relation to art and politics and reconsiders its emancipatory potential today.
While working on my future book, I have published multiple essays and translations directly and indirectly related to my project. I have published academic writings about Marx and the Latin American Marxist tradition, early modern political philosophy (Spinoza and Hobbes), and contemporary continental philosophy (Althusser, Deleuze, and Derrida).
In my previous life as an astrophysicist, my research focused on cosmology, general relativity, alternative gravity theories, and galaxy clusters.
Beyond my own academic research, I have also published several translations of texts written by Verónica Gago, Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, Karen Barad, Brenna Bhandar, Alberto Toscano, and Mauricio Malamud.
Alongside Dan Nemser and Maria Laura Martinelli, I coordinate the Marxisms Collective Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop (RIW) at the University of Michigan.
You can find links to my publications, translations, public writings (and interviews), course descriptions of classes I have developed, as well as some of my recorded talks on my website.
If you have any questions or would like to reach out about my work, don't hesitate to write to me at my academic e-mail address.
