In this session, they will discuss a draft of the introduction to Romina Wainberg’s monograph-in-process, Against Productivity: Unproductive Writing in Early Latin American Fiction. The introduction grapples with a long-standing grand narrative about early Latin American novels, namely that by imagining heterosexual romances between different ethno-racial and socio-economic constituencies, these works seduced readers into literally and symbolically (re)producing citizens of new nation-states. Wainberg argues that, in nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Latin America, the same novels that were supposed to engender “productive” citizens through the instructional power of the written letter depicted the very act of writing as an “unproductive” activity: that is, as an act performed against the socioeconomic interests of slavery-based and emerging capitalist societies.

Speaker: Romina Wainberg, Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell University.

Moderated by Alejandra Vela, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University and Mariano Siskind, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.

About the Speaker

Romina Wainberg is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University’s Department of Romance Studies and will be starting a tenure-track appointment in Latin American and Iberian Cultures at the University of Southern California in 2025. She holds a Specialization in Creative Writing from Casa de Letras, a B.A. in Literary Theory and Modern Literature from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, an M.Phil. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Glasgow, and a Ph.D. in Iberian and Latin American Cultures from Stanford University. Her research addresses the still unresolved question of what “writing” is. In her first book project, she argues that nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Latin American novelists posited intricate theories of writing in their fiction, debunking the myth of the author as an “inspired genius” and reconceiving the act of penning as a mediated, embodied, effortful, and ecological activity. Her follow-up research explores how South American science fiction and Queer art imagine writing technologies of the future.

About the Series

The Arts & Humanities Workshop Series fosters scholarly discussions centered on the work of leading academics in the fields of the Arts & Humanities.