Ileana
Rodriguez, Professor Literatures and Cultures of Latin America
Areas of specialization
Latin American Literature and Culture
Caribbean and Central American Narratives
Feminist Studies
Post-Colonial Theory
Subaltern Studies
Academic appointments
Visiting Associate Professor (Summer, 1989). Literature Department, University of California San Diego. La Jolla, CA.
Associate Professor (1980-85). Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Minnesota. Minneapolis, MN.
Assistant Professor (1975-79). Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Minnesota. Minneapolis, MN.
Visiting Assistant Professor (Winter, 1977). Literature Department, University of California San Diego, La Jolla. CA.
Books
Women, Guerrillas, and Love: Understanding War in Central America. Trans. Ileana Rodrguez and Robert Carr. Minneapolis: London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
House/Garden/Nation: Space, Gender, and Ethnicity in Post-Colonial Latin American Literatures by Women. Trans. Robert Carr and Ileana Rodrguez. Durham: London: Duke University Press, 1994.
On Ungovernability and Citizenship. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez and Mara Milagros Lpez. Durham: Duke University Press, (forthcoming).
Process of Unity in Caribbean Society: Ideologies and Literature. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez and Marc Zimmerman. Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1983.
Nicaragua in Revolution: The Poets Speak. Nicaragua en Revolucin: Los poetas hablan. Ed. Bridget Aldaraca, Edward Baker, Ileana Rodrguez, and Marc Zimmerman. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press, 1981.
Marxism and New Left Ideology. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez and William L. Rowe. Proc. of Midwest Marxist Scholars Conference. (1st: 1976: University of Minnesota). Studies in Marxism. 1. Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press, 1977.
Current research projects
My current research is on the methods of constructing discourses and defining fields of knowledge. My work seeks to map conceptual routes, the long journey from Mercantilism to Neo-Liberalism. My main quest is to enter the dynamics of discourse intersection itself and to follow its inner logic, focusing on nature and the representation of nature as it mutates from landscape into sugar fields, from forests into plantations, from cascades and lakes into transoceanic canals. As discursive formations pass from wilderness into pastoral, and from pastoral into narratives of travel and exploration and from there into discourses on mining, industry, commerce and development, the natural process once narrated as disorder, ignorance, and entropy follows a curve that briefly passing through a moment of positivistic order, seems to lead again towards narratives of entropy and chaos. How that process is written is my main purpose; how it mutates, enables and condones, my aim. As new enclosures of the natural spaces get under way, and increasingly smaller margins of nature are assigned to "natives," the current processes of natural industrial development, could betray these workings in reverse. The hermeneutics of cultural constructions are part of my discussion. Inevitably, I skirt the issues of civility, civitas, and civilization, as concepts counterposed to native/nature. The sources for this text are varied, and do not necessarily follow a chronological order. Rather, I advocate adjacency. I want to inscribe colonial texts into postcolonial discourse to pinpoint the continuities.
