It is with great pleasure that the Department of Spanish and Portuguese announces the award of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship to Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia. This year the Foundation received 500 applications for the competition of Latin American and Caribbean fellowships and 33 fellows were selected.

With the Guggenheim Fellowship and his recently awarded GRB, Juan Carlos will devote twelve months to his project,”Listening Travels: Poetics and Politics in the Caribbean Archipelago.” His research examines how poetry and the act of listening are embedded in the texts of authors living in the Caribbean or passing through the archipelago. He will analyze how poetic enunciation and performance interact with political subjectivity. His project is not focused on the events of ‘real’ politics as seen in a particular poet’s point of view or political activism, but instead uncovers the performance of the poetic literary word in the Hispanic Caribbean as a means of enacting the space and logic of what has been called the politics of literature. This book-length study outlines the conditions of the literary text as a singular space and as a text that affects the beliefs of both the reader and the citizens in a Hispanic Caribbean society.

A recognized poet and literary critic, Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia has received the Premio Iberoamericano for the Best Book written in Spanish or Portuguese in Latin American Studies (2004) for his book, Fulguración del espacio. Letras e imaginario institucional de la Revolución cubana (1960-1971). His El hilo para el marisco/Cuaderno de los envíos won the Pen Club Poetry Prize in Puerto Rico in 2004. In fall of 2010, his research will also be funded by a semester award from the Graduate Research Board at the University.

Recently elected as Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
beginning fall 2009, Quintero Herencia previously has served as Director of Graduate Studies in the department since 2005.

Felicitaciones Juan Carlos.

More information at:

http://www.gf.org/news-events/Latin-American-and-Caribbean-Guggenheim-Fellowship-Awards-2009/

http://www.gf.org/news-events/List-of-2009-Fellows-Latin-America-and-Caribbean/