Mauricio Castillo

BA in Classics (Latin) and Latin American History, University of Arizona-Tucson. MA, MPhil, Columbia University. Special interest in Latin American literature and culture from the 19th century to the present, visual culture, the Latin American Left, and postcolonial theory. Currently completing a dissertation in Hispanic Studies titled, Avant-Garde and Socialist Dreamworlds in Latin America. This study explores socialist utopias in avant-garde cultural productions, including muralism (Diego Rivera), indigenismo (Amauta), and poetry (César Vallejo). Some of the main topics of this research are: the figure of the intellectual and the history of radical ideas in Latin America, public art and state sponsorship, and the autonomy of art at the intersection of politics and aesthetics. Recently published work includes: “This Will Be The Proletarian Revolution: Local and Global Dreamworlds in the Murals at the Secretariat of Public Education” in Seeing in Spanish: From Don Quixote to Daddy Yankee; Twenty-Two Essays on Hispanic Visual Cultures (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). SLC, 2012–