UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra, assistant professor of comparative literature at Penn State, will present “'Mésaventures': The Politics and Poetics of the Dictator-Novel in the African Postcolony," at 12:15 p.m. Feb. 26, in Room 102 of the Kern Building.
Armillas-Tiseyra is the Caroline D. Eckhardt Early Career Professor of Comparative Literature. Her work centers on African and Latin American literatures, with a focus on the intersection of large-scale frameworks — including World Literature, the Global Anglophone, and in particular the Global South — with local and regional specificities. She has published essays on such topics as women’s writing in 19th-century Argentina; the function of the fetish in representations of the African dictator; Africa and science fiction; and magical realism in the South Atlantic; she is also the co-founder and co-director of the website, Global South Studies. Her first book, "The Dictator-Novel: Writers and Politics in the Global South," is under contract with Northwestern UP, and her talk today is drawn from the fourth chapter of that manuscript.
This event is a part of the Comparative Literature Luncheon lecture series, a weekly, informal lunchtime gathering of students, faculty and other members of the University community. Each week the event begins at 12:15 p.m. — coffee and light lunch fare is provided. At 12:30 p.m. there will be a presentation, by a visitor or a local speaker, on a topic related to any humanities discipline. All students, faculty, colleagues and friends are welcome. For a full list of Comparative Literature lunches, visit http://complit.la.psu.edu/news-events/comp-lit-luncheon-series. This event is sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature and the Center for Global Studies.