Today, UNC professor Juan Carlos González Espitia will giave a talk on syphilis and literature at 5pm in Leahy 235. Dr. González Espitia is an Associate Professor of Spanish and affiliated faculty in Comparative Literature. From a literary and historical perspective, his work is a diachronic approach to Latin American and Spanish literary production in dialogue with critical medical humanities and questions of public health from the eighteenth century to the present, with a strong focus on the associations between the discourses of disease, literature, and public policy. He is the editor of the established North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures book series as well as the editor of the journal Hispanófila.
González Espitia teaches courses and guides doctoral candidates in multiple periods and through an array of disciplinary perspectives, from Spanish American and Peninsular literature of the Enlightenment to Avant-Garde literary production, to LatinX literature, and from seminars on cultural representations of disease and (dis)ability to courses on the theory of poiesis or literary creation. His research focuses on non-canonical, heterodox, or otherwise hidden literatures, ideas and authors that, although oftentimes absent from the canons, reveal profound trends in culture and society. More pointedly, his work deals with representations of disease, forms of writing that challenge the status quo, and nation building, including the complex dynamics from a colonial condition to one of budding independence.
