2025 Theses Doctoral

Archivos del río: prácticas e imaginarios fluviales en la cultura latinoamericana

Luengas Solano, Manuela Maria

In this dissertation, I study Latin American art, literature, and cinema that bring rivers to the center of debates regarding political memory, environmental justice, and more-than-human epistemologies, from the nineteenth century into the present. This research takes as its starting point the key role of rivers in spatial, extractivist, and political enterprises throughout the region to propose a new analytical framework within cultural studies and the environmental humanities. Concretely, I argue that rivers are both actors and archives of Latin American history, which are inhabited and interrogated by artists and communities alike.

Part One of the dissertation focuses on the role of rivers in contexts of political violence, specifically in Colombia and Paraguay, where dictatorships and other forms of state repression have used rivers as spaces for forced disappearance. In Part Two, I study how contemporary artists and filmmakers challenge historical narratives of development and progress by rewriting late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archives of travel writing and state-financed projects. Through various case studies, I demonstrate that rivers constitute a field of aesthetic and political inquiry in contemporary cultural production. I conclude that a new approach to rivers as meaningful hydrosocial entities gives us a unique perspective through which we can analyze the longstanding entanglement between humans and more-than-humans in Latin American and beyond.