Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Anke Birkenmaier is currently serving as chair of the Spanish and Portuguese department in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University. Birkenmaier is a scholar of modern Caribbean and Latin American literature and culture, and in studying these areas she has two major foci. She studies literature in relation to other discourses such as anthropology, looking at the ways in which ideas about culture and race have evolved over time. Her interest in media and sound studies has also led her to explore the ways in which the novel has entered in competition with other communication media.

Her award-winning book, Alejo Carpentier y la cultura del surrealismo en América Latina (2006) presented an analysis of the little known early years of Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, when he engaged with “dissident” surrealists in Paris in the 1930s (Robert Desnos, the Collège de Sociologie, Antonin Artaud), and worked for the radio and advertising industry. She argues that Carpentier’s cycle of American novels, written after his return to Latin America, was profoundly influenced both by the experience he gained as a sound engineer and by the creative potential of surrealism, despite his famous later denial of the movement.

Her second monograph, The Specter of Races. Latin American Anthropology and Literature between the Wars (2016) tells the story of the interconnected scientific and literary networks that established Latin American anthropology as a key discipline in the Americas from the 1920s onward. Her book reconstructs two decades of scientific and literary collaborations in the service of anti-racist theories of Latin American culture. Yet even there, she argues, the persistence of biological notions of race and mestizaje has haunted Latin Americanists until today.

Among more recent project, her critical edition of German cultural philosopher Oswald Spengler’s posthumous drama Moctezuma (in German and in Spanish) stands out. As director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies here at Indiana University (2015-2019), she worked across the humanities and social sciences with Latin Americanist colleagues at IU and further on public impact research and outreach. One outcome of such interdisciplinary collaborations was the volume, edited by her, of Caribbean Migrations. The Legacies of Colonialism (2020). Her next project is called, “The Latin American Novel in the Digital Age,” and it will allow her to explore further the ways in which Latin American writers of the 20th and 21st century have engaged with electronic media of mass communication, such as the telephone, the radio, television, and podcasts.

Books

• Alejo Carpentier y la cultura del surrealismo en América Latina. Madrid: Vervuert-Iberoamericana, 2006.
• The Specter of Races. Latin American Anthropology and Literature between the Wars. New World Studies. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016.

Edited Books

• Cuba: un siglo de literatura (1902-2002). Co-edited with Roberto González Echevarría. Madrid: Colibrí, 2004. 
• Havana Beyond the Ruins. Cultural Mappings after 1989. Co-edited with Esther Whitfield. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.
• Caribbean Migrations. The Legacies of Colonialism. Editor. Critical Caribbean Studies. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020.

Editions

• Versionen Montezumas. Lateinamerika in der historischen Imagination des 19. Jahrhunderts. Mit dem vollständigen Manuskript von Oswald Spenglers Montezuma. Ein Trauerspiel (1897). Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2011.
• Oswald Spengler, Moctezuma. Un drama (1897). Edición y estudio introductorio de Anke Birkenmaier. Traducción de Jorge Cuesta. Madrid: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2020.

Selected essays

• “Alejo Carpentier’s and Cuba’s Literary Twentieth Century” The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature. Eds. Vicky Unruh, Jacqueline Loss (forthcoming).
• “Valeria Luiselli’s Desierto sonoro and the Sonic Registers of the Novel.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos,3. (October 2023): 519-38.
• * “Sound Studies and Latin American Literature.” Mariano Siskind, Guillermina De Ferrari, eds. The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Latin American Literary and Cultural Forms. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022. 347-355.
• “El Moctezuma de Spengler.” Letras Libres (México) 266 (February, 2021). https://www.letraslibres.com/mexico/revista/el-moctezuma-oswald-spengler.
• *”Severo Sarduy y la radio.” Cámara de eco. Homenaje a Severo Sarduy. Gustavo Guerrero, Catalina Quesada, eds. México: Fondo de cultura económica, 2018.
• “’Soy una Juana de Arco electrónica’: Severo Sarduy’s radio play ‘Dolores Rondón’. La Habana Elegante. Segunda época. 57 (November 2015). http://www.habanaelegante.com/November_2015/Invitation_Birkenmaier.html
• ”Leonardo Padura and the New Historical Novel” A contracorriente 13.1 (Fall 2015): 13-25. Special issue: “Post-Detection Padura”. Eds. Guillermina de Ferrari, Vicky Unruh. http://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/1417
• “El linchamiento, el teléfono móvil y la gran ciudad: dos ficciones negras de Ena Lucía Portela.” Mitologías hoy. Revista de pensamiento, crítica y estudios literarios latinoamericanos (Barcelona) 10 (2014): 63-71. Special issue: “Una ventana a la obra de Ena Lucía Portela y a la narrativa cubana del siglo XXI.” http://revistes.uab.cat/mitologias/issue/view/19.
• “Scenarios of Colonialism and Culture. Oswald Spengler’s Latin America.” MLN Hispanic Issue 28.2 (March, 2013): 256-276.
• “Entre filología y antropología: Fernando Ortiz y el Día de la Raza.” Antípoda. Revista de antropología y arqueología 15 (Colombia) (July-Dec 2012). Special issue: “Antropología y literatura.” 193-221.
• “Introduction: Is there a Post-Cuban Literature?” Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 82. 44.1. Special issue: “Cuba inside and out” (May 2011). 6-12.
• "El hispanismo en América. Literatura, estudios culturales y lingüística en el panorama actual." Nuevos hispanismos interdisciplinarios y trasatlánticos. Ed. Julio Ortega. Madrid: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2010. 199-213.
• "Art of the Pastiche: José Manuel Prieto's Rex and Cuban Literature of the 1990s." Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 43. Special Issue: "Cuban Literature of the 1990s" (2009): 123-147.
• "From Surrealism to Popular Art: Paul Deharme's Radio Theory." Modernism/Modernity 16.2 (2009): 357-374.
• Dirty Realism at the End of the Century: Latin American Apocalyptic fictions."Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 40 (fall 2006): 489-512.
• "Más allá del realismo sucio: El rey de La Habana de Pedro Juan Gutiérrez." Cuban Studies 32 (2001): 37-55.

• Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.
• Premio Iberoamericano 2007 of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) for Alejo Carpentier y la cultura del surrealismo en América Latina.
• Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities.