2023-2024 Richard E. Greenleaf Fellows at the Latin American Library
After a pandemic-imposed hiatus, we are delighted to resume the Richard E. Greenleaf Fellowship Program at the LAL, beginning in Spring 2024. In June, the selection committee chose three prominent scholars from three different countries and academic fields. The first two scholars are:
Denise León (Argentina; Universidad Nacional de Tucumán & Universidad Nacional de Salta) who will be here February 1 to March 30, 2024. Dr. León will work on Networks of Reconnection in Central American Poetry Written by Women: The “Continuing Ballad” of Eunice Odio, Yolanda Oreamuno, Claudia Lars and Clementina Suárez. The project illuminates a specific chapter in the network of reconnections of women writers in Latin America by focusing on the figure and errant trajectory of Costa Rican poet Eunice Odio, centering specifically on the period between 1945-1957. This was a significant moment of her poetic production in which she lived abroad in several Central American countries developing deep professional synergies with other women writers such as Claudia Lars, Yolanda Oreamuno and Clementina Suárez. My project is part of a broader effort to recover a female-centric continuum in Latin America in which women poets weave networks that sustain the intensity of their voices.
Denise León holds a PhD in Literature and teaches at Consejo de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) in Argentina. Her critical works include Izcor. La vela encendida. Cinco relatos de mujeres que hicieron el shabat (2002); La historia de Bruria (2007), El mundo es un hilo de nombres. Sobre la poesía de José Kozer (2013) and numerous articles in Argentine and international journals on poetry and misticism in 20th and 21st century Latin American Literature. She has also published the following books of poetry: Poemas de Estambul (Alción, 2008), El trayecto de la herida (Alción, 2011), El saco de Douglas (Paradiso, 2011), Templo de pescadores (Alción, 2013), Sala de espera (elCRUCEcartonero, 2013), Poemas de Middlebury (Huesos de Jibia, 2014), Mesa de pájaros (Bajo la luna, 2019), Árbol que tiembla (La Ballesta Magnífica, 2022) and Nostalgias del Imbat. Poesía reunida, (EDUNT, 2023). She currently teaches Spanish American literature at Universidad Nacional de Salta and Communication Theory in the Department of Philosophy and Letters at Universidad Nacional de Tucumán in Argentina.
Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza (México; El Colegio de Michoacán) will be in New Orleans February 1 to March 30, 2024 with a project titled A Comparative Approach to Mesoamerica´s Early Social Complexity. Dr. Heredia will conduct research on early Mesoamerican cases of social complexity to advance our understanding of the processes behind diverse trajectories of cultural development. The collections at the Latin American Library at Tulane University hold an extensive and comprehensive collection of literature on the archaeology of Mesoamerica. Data from across Mesoamerica will be coded using settlement patterns, distribution of civic-ceremonial architecture, internal structure of large settlements, wealth and status differences, imagery, and ideology. The results of this research promise to shed light on cases of social complexity that are poorly understood in anthropological and archaeological literature and will be explored in a chapter in an upcoming monograph.
Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza is an Associate Professor of Archaeology at the Centro de Estudios Arqueológicos de El Colegio de Michoacán in México. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Purdue University in 2005. Her research focuses on alternative pathways to social complexity in Mesoamerica with a particular focus on central Jalisco. She has directed several archaeological projects funded by the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, CONACyT, Stresser-Péan Foundation among other funding institutions.
Watch former Greenleaf Fellow Ines Yujnovsky's video montage of her research stay in New Orleans.
The Greenleaf Fellowships at The Latin American Library are made possible by a generous gift from the late Richard E. Greenleaf (1930-2011).
