The Pittsburgh Model and Other Thoughts on the Field (Hispanism/Latin Americanism)

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Between 1980 and 1990 the department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the university shifted its graduate program from one centered on peninsular Hispanism and Hispanic linguistics to one centered on Latinamercanism. My own work underwent a similar shift. From Góngora to Testimonio so to speak. The talk outlines some of the issues involved, which were initially pragmatic but then became theoretical and political. Is a unified narrative of Hispanic civilization such as Carlos Fuentes offered in The Buried Mirror still possible, perhaps today under the rubric of a Global Hispanism? The talk argues that it is not, that Hispanism and Latinamericanism are irreconcilable.