University of Virginia Spanish, Italian & Portuguese

Professor of Spanish

Research: Colonial and Transatlantic Studies, Critical Race Theory, Early Modern Science, American Studies, Modernity Studies.

Responsibilities: Tomorrow’s Professor Today Program Faculty Mentor, Office of African-American Affairs Faculty Mentor, Spanish Major Advisor.

RUTH HILL is Professor of Spanish. She received her B.A. from Northwestern University and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor. Her areas of research and teaching include Colonial and Nineteenth-Century Latin American Studies, Critical Race Theory, Hemispheric Studies, Early Modern Science, Transatlantic Studies, Theories of Baroque and Neobaroque. She is the author of Sceptres and Sciences in the Spains: Four Humanists and the New Philosophy (ca. 1680-1740) (2000), Hierarchy, Commerce and Fraud in Bourbon Spanish America (2005), and numerous essays on colonial Latin American studies and Spanish literature. She has two book mansucripts in-progress: “Aztecs, Incas, and Other White Men: A Hemipsheric History of Hate” and “Critical Race Theory in Latin American (Con)Texts.”. Her research has been supported by Fulbright-Hays and NEH Fellowships.

Selected recent publications:

“Entre lo transatlántico y lo hemisférico: Los proyectos raciales de Andrés Bello” [“Between the Transatlantic and the Hemispheric: Andrés Bello’s Racial Projects”]. Otros estudios transatlánticos: lecturas desde lo latinoamericano, special issue of Revista Iberoamericana. Eds. Eyda Merediz and Nina Gerassi Navarro (forthcoming, 2008).

“El drama de hacer patria. Negrofobia, judeofobia y modernidad criolla en Frutos de la educación (1830)” [“The Drama of Nation-Building: Negrophobia, Judeophobia, and Criollo Modernity in Frutos de la educación (1830)”]. Eds. David Mauricio Solodkow and Juan Vitulli. Poéticas de lo criollo: inestabilidad semántica y heterogeneidadidentitaria. La transformación del concepto ‘criollo’ en las letrashispanoamericanas. Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo (forthcoming, 2008).

“Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the Pre-History of Race in Latin America: Reflections on Caste and Hegemony in Valle y Caviedes.” Afro-Hispanic Review (in-press, Fall 2007).

“Between Black and White: A Critical Race Theory Approach to Caste Poetry in the Spanish New World.” Comparative Literature (in-press, Fall 2007).

“Hearing Las Casas Write: Rhetoric and the Facade of Orality in Brevísima relación.” MLA Approaches to Teaching Bartolomé de las Casas. Eds. Santa Arias and Eyda Merediz (in-press, 2007).

“Teaching the Pre-History of Race Along the Hispanic Transatlantic.” Dieciocho 30.1 (Spring 2007): 105-117.

“Conquista y modernidad, 1700-1766. Un enfoque transatlántico” [“Conquest and Modernity, 1700-1766: A Transatlantic Approach”]. Ed. Pablo Fernández Albaladejo. Fénix de España. Modernidad y cultura propia en la España del siglo XVIII (1737-1766). Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2006. 57-71.

“Casta as Culture and the Sociedad de Castas as Literature.” Interpreting Colonialism. Eds. Byron Wells and Philip Stewart. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004. 231-259.