translation and the continuum of decomposition by way of introduction to the idea that translation is a thing that decides when it is to be done but since it is never done we are always repositioning ourselves as subjects in the worlds we imagine and the worlds we occupy and since we can’t really tell the difference between those worlds we engage in translation as a primal force that comes before everything else which is to say that because we cannot scream we translate

— Daniel Borzutzky (2015)

Ethan Madarieta euskal-amerikarra da. He earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with a graduate Minor in Latina/o Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2020. Professor Madarieta’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of Latin American, Latina/o/x, Black, and Indigenous studies with specializations in Latin American, Latina/o/x, Pan-American Indigenous theory and literatures. His research and teaching engage memory studies, gender and sexuality studies, Latina/o/x and Indigenous studies, and critical race and ethnicity studies. His current book project, tentatively titled The Body is (Not) the Land: Memory, Translation, and Territorial Aporias, thinks through conceptions of sovereignty, presence, and precedence in the literatures and political performances (such as the ongoing hunger strikes) of Mapuche Indigenous peoples of Wallmapu [Chile and Argentina]. Through these sites, the book considers how and when Indigenous bodies and land intersect, and in what ways state and Indigenous conceptions of the body and land are distinct and overlapping. The Body Is (Not) the Land attends to the ontoepistemological underpinnings of Indigenous territorial precedence as body-territorial relation and pursues the possibilities of restitution beyond juridical means.

Latin American and Latina/o/x literature; Pan-American Indigenous literatures; Latina/o/x studies; Indigenous studies and settler-colonial studies; memory studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer theory; performance theory; critical race and ethnicity studies.

Each of my classes incorporates forms of embodied learning and experiential pedagogy as a way of cultivating a learning environment that facilitates the relationships needed for engaging in the demanding but necessary work of critical self-reflection and social analysis. I encourage students to be bold in their analyses to contend with the ongoing violent legacies of slavery, colonialism, and dispossessions in their many forms. I teach the importance of relationality in knowledge production and identify pedagogy as a methodology for political, social, and self-transformation.

“The Body Is (Not) the Land: Mapuche Hunger Strikes and the Territorial Aporia.” Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory. (In press)

“Mapuche Hunger Strikes as a Performance of Re-membering.” Handbook to New Approaches in Cultural Memory Studies. Brett A. Kaplan, ed., Bloomsbury Academic. (In press)

“An Impulse Toward Agency: Teaching Sexual Violence in Afro-Latina/o/x Literature.” #MeToo and Literary Studies: Reading, Writing, and Teaching about Sexual Violence and Rape Culture. Mary K. Holland and Heather Hewett, eds., Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Print.

“‘Marichiweu’: Performances of Memory and Mapuche Presence in Guillermo Calderón’s Villa.” Latin American Theatre Review, Vol 53 No 1: Spring 2020. Print.

SUNY PRODiG Scholar