Angeles Donoso Macaya

Professor of Spanish
Modern Languages

Office:

Office Hours: Mon - Wed 12:00 pm–1:00 pm (via zoom)

Phone:

Ángeles Donoso Macaya is an immigrant educator, researcher and activist from Santiago, Chile, based in New York City. She is Professor of Spanish at the Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY and Professor of Latin American Cultures and Visual Studies in the Ph.D. Program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures at The CUNY Graduate Center.

She is the author of La insubordinación de la fotografía (Metales Pesados 2021) / The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship (2020), which received the Best Book Award in Latin American Visual Culture at LASA 2021 and Best Book Award in Recent History and Memory at LASA 2022, and co-editor of Latina/os of the East Coast: A Critical Reader (2015). Her most recent articles are forthcoming or have appeared in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, Cold War Camera (2023) and Photography and its Publics (2020), among others.

Ángeles is also a 2021-2022 Mellon / ACLS Community College Faculty Fellow.

Expertise

Latin/x American photography theory and history; 20^th-21^st century Southern Cone literature and film; Latin/x American (trans)feminisms; Human Rights activism, counter-archival production, and visual legacies of the Cold War with a focus on the Southern Cone and the Andean zone (Perú, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay); visual studies; film and media studies; archival studies; performance studies; immigration studies; food studies; public humanities.

Degrees

Ph.D., August 19^th2010, Washington University in Saint Louis, Hispanic Languages & Literature. Dissertation Title: “La vanguardia y sus retornos: confabulaciones del presente en cuatro escritores latinoamericanos.” Directors: Professors Elzbieta Sklodowska and Claire Solomon.

M.A., December 22^nd 2005, Washington University in Saint Louis, Spanish.

B.A. Summa cum Laude, December 2003, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Hispanic Literature and Linguistics.

Courses Taught

3 CRS.4 HRS.1 LAB HRS. SPN 105 SPN 105 (Elementary Spanish I): This course is for students who have had no previous background in Spanish. Grammar is taught inductively and simple texts are read. Speaking, reading, and writing are emphasized students who have taken SPN 103 will not receive credit for this course.
Prerequisite: Departmental Placement
3 CRS.4 HRS.1 LAB HRS. SPN 107 SPN 107 (Elementary Spanish for Speakers of Spanish I): This is an elementary Spanish course for students who can speak Spanish but have no formal training in the language. Students who have taken SPN 101 and/or SPN 102 will not receive credit for this course.
Prerequisite: Knowledge of spoken Spanish and Departmental Placement
6 CRS.6 HRS.2 LAB HRS. SPN 121 SPN 121 (Elementary Intensive Spanish 1 & 2): This intensive course combines Spanish 105 and 106 into a one-semester course. It is designed for students who have had no previous background in Spanish. Students develop their skills in listening, comprehension, speaking and writing in Spanish, supplemented by readings and analysis of simple Spanish texts. In addition to building vocabulary on everyday life, students develop the ability to make questions and to describe themselves and others, their environment, preferences and lifestyles in Spanish. In the second half of the semester, students are introduced to past tenses, and develop their ability to narrate events and describe people and situations in the past. The course also exposes students to different forms of Spanish and Spanish cultures through music and short film clips. Since the goal is to enhance students’ speaking and writing abilities in Spanish, Spanish will be the main language spoken in class.
3 CRS.3 HRS.NULL LAB HRS. SPN 204 SPN 204 (Spanish Film and Conversation): This course involves intensive oral work consisting of discussions of Hispanic films. Drills in pronunciation, intonation and rhythm are included as well as several oral presentations throughout the course. Films will be screened during class sessions or as homework assignments. Readings, written work, and discussions will be in Spanish.
Prerequisite: SPN 200 or SPN 108 or departmental placement
3 CRS.3 HRS.1 LAB HRS. SPN 300 SPN 300 (Advanced Spanish): This course complies with the last semester of Spanish for Heritage Learners who are completing the basic language requirements. In this course, students will improve their writing skills and increase their vocabulary through readings of material written for native speakers of the Spanish language in order to become more confident in their ability to speak Spanish in public, as well as in reading and writing in their heritage language. Students are expected to read, write and discuss in Spanish the reading topics selected for class. The course will pay close attention at reviewing aspects of grammar, spelling and speech which are troublesome for students who do not fully master cultivated Spanish.
Prerequisite: SPN 210 or SPN 207 or departmental approval
3 CRS.3 HRS.NULL LAB HRS. SPN 400 SPN 400 (Latin American Women Writers): This course introduces students to a representative sampling of Latin American women writers from the colonial period to the twentieth century. The course will disseminate a body of literature, which is represented minimally in Hispanic literature courses. Feminism, machismo, motherhood, sexual and political activism and the role of women as writers are some of the issues that will be explored and discussed during the semester.
Prerequisite: SPN 300 or any SPN 400 level course (except SPN 476) or departmental approval
3 CRS.3 HRS.NULL LAB HRS. SPN 445 SPN 445 (Colonial and 19th Century Latin American Literature): Spanish-American Literature This course involves a chronological history of Spanish- American literature from the Colonial period to the 19th century. Readings include selections from Inca Garcilaso, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sarmiento, José Hernández, Palma, Martí, Darío, and others. Written and oral reports are required.
Prerequisite: SPN 300 or any SPN 400 level course (except SPN 476) or departmental approval
3 CRS.3 HRS.NULL LAB HRS. SPN 450 SPN 450 (Latin American Literature of the 20th and 21st Centuries): The major authors and literary movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries are studied. Works of Horacio Quiroga, Alfonso Reyes, Neruda, César Vallejo, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and others are analyzed. Written and oral reports are required.
Prerequisite: SPN 300 or any SPN 400 level course (except SPN 476) or departmental approval
3 CRS.3 HRS.3 LAB HRS. SPN 472 SPN 472 (Literature, Culture and Civilization of the Greater Antilles): This course is a survey of the literature, culture and civilization of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Haiti, and Jamaica) geared to the understanding of their heritage as it is preserved by their languages and their artistic achievements. Readings are mainly in English; class discussions are in English, Spanish, and any other modern language.
Prerequisite: SPN 300 or any SPN 400 level course (except SPN 476) or departmental approval
3 CRS.3 HRS.NULL LAB HRS. SPN 480 SPN 480 (Spanish and Latin American Texts into Films): This course will introduce students to film adaptations of Spanish and Latin American novels, short stories, diaries and theater plays in the context of the literary and film debate: how does film "translate" text? Should the film be "faithful" to the text? If so, faithful to what aspects, plot dialogue, chronology, social and psychological and socioeconomic backgrounds will be included. Special attention will be given to the study of nationality, gender and sexual differences within Spanish and Latin American societies. Students will examine the connections between text and film, as well as the fundamentals of written and visual identification with the cinematic and textual apparatus.
Prerequisite: SPN 300 or any SPN 400 level course (except SPN 476) or departmental approval

Research and Projects

A Feminist Reading of the Visual Archive of the Agrarian Reform in Chile

The Agrarian Reform promoted by the government of Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970) included extensive education and literacy programs that sought to transform and improve the living conditions of rural workers (campesinos y campesinas). These programs reproduced the same patriarchal structure that characterized the Agrarian Reform process, an eminently modern and modernizing project, in all its spaces and in its different facets. Feminist historians such as Heidi Tinsman, Claudia Fedora Rojas Mira, Hillary Heine, and Ximena Valdés have already shown how the sexual division of labor considerably disadvantaged peasant women within this reforming process. This ongoing research project seeks to complement these contributions; adopting a feminist approach, I take on the visuality generated by the Agrarian Reform as a government policy. I am currently studying: 1) the visual material of the adult literacy program devised and implemented by Paulo Freire, who between 1964 and 1968 worked in the Ministry of Education together with Waldemar Cortés Carabantes and as advisor to Jacques Chonchol in the Agricultural Development Institute [INDAP]; 2) the visual educational and propaganda material designed by INDAP and by the Agrarian Reform Corporation (CORA) to promote different aspects related to the process. I explore the ways of seeing that these images enable (documentary photographs, illustrations, drawings); analyze how the forms of valorization, differentiation and hierarchization underpinning the modernizing and patriarchal project of the Agrarian Reform are reproduced in the visual material generated by the government; discuss how the meanings are sedimented in these images; and also attempt to reconstruct the history of the production of this visual archive—which entities financed these materials, how they were distributed, and who were the illustrators, designers, artists, and photographers involved in their production.

This project is funded by a 2021-2022 Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship, part of a project titled The Expanding Photographic Archive of Feminist Movements in Chile

Imperfect Archive

Imperfect Archive is a creative photographic-theoretical project that brings together unpublished work by Chilean photographers Paz Errázuriz from the period of the dictatorship and an essay written by Professor Ángeles Donoso Macaya. The project contemplates the edition, production and publication of a bilingual book (with an English translation by Ángeles) with one hundred photos of Paz Errázuriz and the realization of a photographic exhibition (thirty photos) in two spaces: the Nemesio Antúnez Room in the UMCE and the Diego Rivera House of Art in Pto. Montt. The project includes the launch of the book in both spaces with the participation of the authors and also two educational activities with students from public elementary schools. The general purpose of this project is to publicize and contextualize a significant corpus for the historiography of the expanding field of photography at the local level: one hundred documentary photos from Errázuriz’s personal archive.

This project is funded by a 2022 FONDART Grant, given by the Chilean National Council for the Arts and Culture.

Archives in Common

Since 2020, Ángeles has been Faculty Lead of Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/ Knowledges/Memory, part of the Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research at The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Archives in Common is a public humanities project developed in collaboration with La Morada, an undocumented family-owned and operated Oaxacan restaurant in the South Bronx. Ángeles has written blogs and presented about Archives in Common along her collaborators at different venues, and, through the Public Seminar, has organized and moderated several conversations with activists, artists, and researchers about current issues: food justice, food sovereignty and community garden stewardship, mutual aid organizing and accountability, toxic clouds and state repression, immigration justice and immigration rights activism, and antiracist work.

Publications

– Books

La insubordinación de la fotografía. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Metales Pesados, 2021.
The Insubordination of Photography. Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship. Book Series “Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America,” edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2020. Best Book in Latin American Visual Culture Studies Award, LASA 2021; Best Book in Memoria e Historia Reciente Award, LASA 2022

Reviewed in:

Oppenhuizen, Clayton. The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship, by Ángeles Donoso Macaya. The Latin Americanist, vol. 65, no. 4, 2021, pp. 579-580. Project MUSE, 1353/tla.2021.0039
Stone, Livia K. The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship, by Ángeles Donoso Macaya. The Americas. A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, vol. 78 no. 1, 2021, pp. 192-193. Project MUSE https://muse.jhu.edu/article/781517
Sharnak, Debbie. The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices Under Chile’s Dictatorship. By Ángeles Donoso Macaya. Journal of Social History, vol. 55, issue 1, Fall 2021, pp. 279-281. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shaa036
Pardo Porto, Cristina Elena. The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship, de Ángeles Donoso Macaya. Iberoamericana XX, no. 75, 2020, pp. 307-311. https://doi.org/10.18441/ibam.20.2020.75.263-366
Fischer, Carl. Ángeles Donoso Macaya. The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship. Revista Iberoamericana, LXXXVII, no. 275, abril – junio 2021, pp. 610-612. https://doi.org/10.5195/reviberoamer.2021.8075
Jashari, Denisa. The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship, by Ángeles Donoso Macaya, H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. June, 2021. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56393
Merchant, Paul. The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship, by Ángeles Donoso Macaya. Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol. 98, no. 3, 2021, pp. 479-497. https://doi.org/10.1080/14753820.2021.1918489

co-edited with Yolanda Medina. Latinas/os on the East Coast. A Critical Reader. New York: Peter Lang, 2015.

– Peer-Reviewed Articles

“Feminism and Photography: A Situated Exploration of the Visual Archive of Feminisms in Chile.” In The Routledge Companion to Photography, Representation and Social Justice. Ed. Moritz Neumüller. (Routledge/Taylor and Francis; forthcoming in Spring 2023). Print.
“Interrogating the Cold War’s Geo-Politics from Down South: Chile from within (1990) and the Construction of a Situated Visuality.” In Cold War Camera. Eds. Thy Phu, Andrea Noble and Erinna Duganne. Durham, NC: Duke University Press (forthcoming in Spring 2023). Print.
“‘Somos más’: Towards a Feminist Critique of the Photographic Archive of the Movement of Women and Feminists against the Chilean Dictatorship.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies4 (forthcoming in December 2022). Print.
“Documentary Photography and Protest under Chile’s Dictatorship.” The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. London: Oxford University Press, 2021. Web.
“A Little History of Photographic Displacements: from Chile from Within (1990) to Chile desde adentro (2015).” In Photography and its Publics. Eds. Melissa Miles and Edward Welsh. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2020. 127-145. Print.
“Jamás el fuego nunca de Diamela Eltit: Imaginación crítica, persistencia y afectos.” In Un asombro renovado: vanguardias contemporáneas en Latinoamérica. Eds. Matthew Bush and Luis H Castañeda. Madrid: Editorial Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2017. 127-148. Print.
co-authored with César Barros A. “Dis-locar la materia, re-orientar el presente. Sobre Neltume señala el camino (2016) de Araya-Carrión.” Vazantes Special Issue Matéria, Materialização, Novos Materialismos. 1.1 (2017): 61-84.
“Variations of ‘Frida’: Graciela Iturbide, Mario Bellatin, and La Chica Boom.” In Technology, Literature, and Digital Culture in Latin America: Mediatized Sensibilities in a Globalized Era. Eds. Matthew Bush and Tania Gentic. London: Routledge, 2016. 181-204. Print.
“Re-pensar la memoria fotográfica. Desplazamientos e irrupciones del retrato fotográfico durante la dictadura militar en Chile.” In Des/memorias: culturas y prácticas mnemónicas en América Latina y el Caribe. Eds. Adriana López Labourdette, Silvia Spitta, and Valeria Wagner. Barcelona: Linkgua Ediciones, 2016. 33-57. Print.
co-authored with Melissa González. “Orthodox Transgressions: The Ideology of Cross-Species, Cross-Class, and Inter-Racial Queerness in Lucía Puenzo’s novel El niño pez (The Fish Child).” American Quarterly Special Issue Species/Race/Sex. Eds. Claire Jean Kim and Carla Freccero. 3 (September 2013): 711-733. Print.
“Arte, documento y fotografía: Prolegómenos para una reformulación del campo fotográfico en Chile (1977-1998).” Aisthesis2 (December 2012): 407-424. Print.
“‘Yo soy Mario Bellatin y soy de ficción’ o el paradójico borde de lo autobiográfico en El Gran Vidrio (2007).” Chasqui1 (June 2011): 96-110. Print.
“Estética, política y el posible territorio de la ficción en 2666 de Roberto Bolaño.” Revista Hispánica Moderna2 (December 2009): 125-142. Print.

Honors, Awards and Affiliations

FONDART Artistic Grant, given by the Chilean National Council for the Arts and Culture [CNCA] (February 2022 – December 2022). Project Title: “Archivo Imperfecto. Fotografías de Paz Errázuriz y Textos de Ángeles Donoso Macaya”
Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellow, The Expanding Photographic Archive of Feminist Movements in Chile (July 2021 – December 2022).
Faculty Leader of Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/Knowledges/Memory, part of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research at The Center for the Humanities, The Graduate Center, CUNY (September 2020 – August 2022).
PSC CUNY Research Grant, Type A (July 2020 – July 2021).
Principal Reviewer, FONDART Artistic and Research Grant, given by the Chilean National Council for the Arts and Culture [CNCA]. Nominated and elected to review all National and Regional research projects competing in the Area of Visual Arts: Photography. (Year cycle 2019 – 2020).
Modern Languages Association (MLA) Assembly Delegate, elected to represent Community Colleges Faculty in the North East. (2018 – 2021).
PSC CUNY Research Grant, Type B (July 2018 – July 2019).
CUNY Book Completion Award (May 2018 – April 2019).
Stewart Travel Grant (CUNY, Spring 2018).
PSC CUNY Research Grant, Type A (July 2017 – July 2018).
PSC CUNY Research Grant, Type A (July 2016 – July 2017).
Stewart Travel Grant (CUNY, Spring 2016).
NYU Faculty Resource Network (Scholar-In-Residence, Summer 2015).
PSC CUNY Research Grant, Type B (July 2014 – July 2015).
BMCC Faculty Development Research Grant (July 2014 – July 2015).
FONDART Artistic and Research Grant, given by the Chilean National Council for the Arts and Culture [CNCA] (July 2012 – January 2014). Project Title: “Arte, documento y fotografía en Chile, 1976 – 1990”
Faculty Development Grant, McDaniel College (Spring 2012).
Faculty Development Grant, McDaniel College (Fall 2011).
Arts & Sciences Dissertation Fellowship, Washington University in Saint Louis (August 2009 – May 2010).
Bryant Grant, Field Work Dissertation Grant, Washington University in Saint Louis. (May –August 2009).
Academic Excellence Award, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (December 2003).

Additional Information

Public Humanities

Situated Cameras: A Conversation with Photographers Zahara Gómez and Cinthya Santos-Briones, moderated by Professor Ángeles Donoso Macaya, Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research, The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY. November 2, 2021. (Conversation via zoom).
Food Justice, Activism, and the Public University: A Conversation. A conversation between CUNY Faculty Naomi Schiller (Brooklyn College), Ryan Mann-Hamilton (LaGuardia Community College), Michael Menser (Brooklyn College), and Ángeles Donoso Macaya (Borough of Manhattan Community College). Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research, The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY. (Conversation via zoom)
Gas lacrimógeno: El riesgo real. Conversación en torno a la obra Plaza Dignidad de Forensic Architecture, Forensic Architecture and No + Lacrimógenas, Museo Arte Contemporáneo de México (MUAC), May 30, 2021. (Conversation via zoom)
WE SAVE US. A morada for mutual aid. A Conversation with Carolina Saavedra, Marco Saavedra, and Yajaira Saavedra from La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen. Organizer and moderator of this event, co-sponsored by La Morada Restaurant and Archives in Common, a project part of the Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research, The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY. May 24, 2021. (Event via zoom)
Socializing Toxic Clouds. A Conversation with Samaneh Moafi (Forensic Architecture), Imani Jacqueline Brown (Forensic Architecture), and Anna Feigenbaum, author of Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WWI to the Streets of Today (Verso 2017). Organizer and moderator of this event, co-sponsored by Forensic Architecture and Archives in Common, a project part of the Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research, The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY. May 5, 2021. (Event via zoom)
The Undocumented-Led Struggle for Freedom: A Conversation with the Authors of Eclipse of Dreams (2020). Organizer and moderator of this event, co-sponsored by La Morada Restaurant and Archives in Common, a project part of the Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research, The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY. October 14, 2020. (Event via zoom)

As member of the activist research collective somoslacélula, she creates video-essays that respond to pressing matters, such as “Matar el ojo” (2020), formulated in collaboration with writer Lina Meruane. In 2020, Ángeles collaborated with Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London, in the video-investigation Tear Gas in Plaza de la Dignidad.