{"id":17425,"date":"2022-01-25T16:20:50","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T16:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=17425"},"modified":"2026-02-27T22:24:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T22:24:37","slug":"shelf-conscious-ernesto-capello","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2022\/01\/shelf-conscious-ernesto-capello\/","title":{"rendered":"Shelf Conscious: Ernesto Capello"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever wonder about all those books lining professors\u2019 offices? We\u2019re with you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Ernesto Capello\u2019s Latin American history courses emphasize the intersections of local and global identity, racial difference and power, and the relationships among arts, politics, and the state.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any standout books you\u2019ve read recently?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

En el espejo haitiano. Los indios del Baj\u00edo y el colapso del orden colonial en Am\u00e9rica Latina<\/em>, by Mexican historian Luis Fernando Granados, rethinks the Mexican War of Independence from the perspective of Indigenous communities in the wake of its 2010 bicentennial. It\u2019s a fascinating way of thinking about the past through the lens of the present while also trying to center Indigenous peoples\u2019 experiences within a cosmopolitan worldview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s one of your all-time favorite reads?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every five years or so, I read Foucault\u2019s Pendulum<\/em>, by Umberto Eco. It\u2019s a masterful, brilliant piece of work\u2014like what The Da Vinci Code<\/em> wanted to be but couldn\u2019t. It\u2019s also inspirational for my latest book project about representations of the Andean equator within geographic science and visual culture since the eighteenth century. I\u2019m pretty convinced I\u2019m actually trying to write a decolonial version of Foucault\u2019s Pendulum<\/em>. And failing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What book is crucial to understanding your academic niche?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I study the cultural history of Latin America from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries and am interested in the interplay between local processes, identities, geographies, and global ideas of belonging. Mary Louise Pratt\u2019s Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation<\/em> and Julio Ramos\u2019s Desencuentros de la modernidad en Am\u00e9rica Latina: literatura y pol\u00edtica en el siglo XIX<\/em> both have that interplay surrounding questions around travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any guilty-pleasure reads?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really enjoy mysteries. Years ago, I inherited fifty Agatha Christies, and during the pandemic, my partner and I have been reading them out loud, which has been a fun project. I also recently read a fabulous new translation of The Three Musketeers<\/em> by Alexandre Dumas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What book would you recommend to everybody at Macalester?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Swallow and the Tom Cat: A Love Story<\/em>, by the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado. It\u2019s kind of hard to find, but worth it. It\u2019s a fable about a doomed love story between a swallow and a tomcat and contains some beautifully evocative musings on what love is about and how it can transform an individual.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever wonder about all those books lining professors\u2019 offices? We\u2019re with you.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":17449,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17425"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30699,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17425\/revisions\/30699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}