Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón

  • Director of the Lemle Center
  • Irvin E Houck Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies

Education

  • BA, University of Puerto Rico, 2009
  • MA, Emory University, 2013
  • PhD, Emory University, 2015 

Biography

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón is a scholar and writer.

His academic research focuses on 19th-century Latin American intellectual history and cultural studies, as well as on 20th-century Mexican and Caribbean literatures. He has recently published articles on literature and ethics and nineteenth-century conservatism. 

His scholarly monograph, Mexico, Interrupted: Labor, Idleness, and the Economic Imaginary of Independence, was published in June 2023 by Vanderbilt University Press. It received an Honorable Mention at the Latin American Studies Association’s Mexico Section’s Best Book of the Humanities.

He is author of the novels Los días hábiles (2020), Dicen que los dormidos (2014), and Palacio (2011), and the short-story collection Preciosos perdedores (2019).

His short stories have appeared in multiple venues, including most recently in translation in World Literature Today. In 2023, he was commissioned to write a story for the WNYC-Futuro Media podcast La brega.

In 2017 he was selected as part of the Hay Festival’s Bogota 39, a list of the 39 best Latin American writers under 39. He has also received the Festival de la Palabra’s Premio Nuevas Voces, a prize given to up and coming Puerto Rican authors, and the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña’s National Novel Prize.

Between 2010 and 2019, he wrote a monthly op-ed for Puerto Rico’s main newspaper, El Nuevo Día.

As a translator, he has published translations into Spanish of Brian Price’s The Cult of Defeat and Ignacio Sánchez Prado’s Screening Neoliberalism: Transforming Mexican Cinema, 1988-2012.

He runs the online Puerto Rican literary magazine La pequeña, and is the Mellon-Mays Faculty Coordinator on campus.

  • Mexico, Interrupted: Labor, Idleness, and the Economic Imaginary of Independence (Vanderbilt University Press, 2023)
  • “La disposición censoria: las dos vidas de Fernández de Lizardi y las sensibilidades conservadoras en México”. Revista Letral 31 (2023): 145-165.
  • “La impresión conservadora: los hermanos Uribe y Alcalde y el campo tipográfico del primer conservadurismo mexicano, 1828-1834”. Decimonónica: Journal of Nineteenth Century Hispanic Cultural Production 19.2 (Summer, 2022).
  • “Instituent Fictions: The Exceptional Present, the Junta Nacional Instituyente and Mexico’s First Post-Independence Fiscal Plan (1822)” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 30:3 (2021: 323-348).
  • “Theological Aesthesis: A Reading of the Mexican Catholic Newspaper La Cruz (1855-1858).” Sensibilidades conservadoras, edited by  Kari Soriano Slavjeik. Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert (2021): 353-373.
  • “Satire and The Lie of Politics: El Mono (México, March 1833-June 1833)” Tiempo Histórico 20 (July 2020: 17-35).
  • “Libertad para los feos: fealdad y libertad en Luces artificiales de Daniel Sada (2002)” (Hispanófila 188. (Summer 2020: 115-130). 

Fall 2024

Intermediate Spanish II — HISP 203

Capstone — HISP 501

Spring 2025

Qué flow: Music, Culture, and Politics in Latin America — HISP 350

Music, Culture, & Politics — HISP 350OC

Puerto Rico Post-Mortem: Nation, Identity, and Language in a Non-Sovereign Territory — HISP 452

Notes

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón Launches Small Literary Press in Puerto Rico

December 4, 2024

Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutierrez Negron cofounded the small literary press La pequeña, proyecto editorial. The inaugural Fall 2024 catalog includes a memoir about Montserrat’s volcanic explosion in the 1990s written by author Yvonne Weekes; a novel by a 25 year-old Puerto Rican novelist, Daniel Rosa Hunter; and a literary travelogue by Mexican writer, Luis Felipe Lomelí. La pequeña will publish three books a year, spanning Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and Latin American literature.

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón Article Published

September 20, 2023

Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón has published the article "La disposición censoria: las dos vidas de Fernández de Lizardi y las sensibilidades conservadoras en México” (“The Censorial Disposition: The Two Lives of Fernández de Lizardi and Conservative Sensibilities in Mexico”). The article offers a new account of the life of Mexico’s first novelist, José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (1776-1827), and explores structurally conservative aspects and uses of the 19th century novel.

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón Book Published

August 30, 2023

Associated Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón’s book, Mexico, Interrupted: Labor, Idleness, and the Economic Imaginary of Independence, was published in June by Vanderbilt University Press. Mexico, Interrupted studies the post-independence elite’s obsession with the labor and idleness of the population between in their attempts to create a wealthy, independent nation. 

Sergio Gutiérrez Delivered Invited Lectures

April 19, 2023

On February 28 and April 2, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez delivered  invited lectures in the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and in University of Texas, Permian Basin. His talks, on figures of labor and idleness, respectively, in 19th century Mexican economic discourse are part of his forthcoming book, Mexico, Interrupted: Labor, Idleness, and the Economic Imaginary of Independence.

 

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón Writes Audio Fiction for Podcast

March 22, 2023

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón wrote and translated an audio fiction story for the new season of La Brega: Stories of the Puerto Rican Experience, hailed as one of the “Best Podcasts of 2021” by The New Yorker and The New York Times. Following host Alana Casanova Burgess' prompt about taking the classic Puerto Rican anthem "Boricua En La Luna” literally, the story speculates about what would happen if someone Puerto Rican were actually born on the moon? A Zoom conversation about the podcast and the episode, hosted by the Center of Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CENTRO) took place on March 16.

Sergio Gutierrez Negron Article Published in "Decimonónica"

August 9, 2022

Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutierrez Negron has published the article "La impresión conservadora: los hermanos Uribe y Alcalde y el campo tipográfico del primer conservadurismo mexicano, 1828-1836” in Decimonónica: A Journal of Nineteenth Century Hispanic Cultural Production. Halfway between biographical reconstruction and cultural analysis, this article offers a joint profile of minor printers Tomás and José Uribe y Alcalde, who were active in Mexico between 1822 and 1836. This account allows the reader to observe the inner workings of the Mexican typographical field and its relationship to the nascent economy of conservative knowledge, as well as the possibility of social mobility it provided.

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón's Novel Subject of Podcast

June 2, 2022

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón’s most recent novel, Los días hábiles (2020), was the subject of the most recent episode of the podcast De Libro en Libro. The book was discussed by the hosts and their guest, Puerto Rican Independence Party’s gubernatorial candidate, Juan Dalmau.

The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón Publishes Book-length Translation

May 20, 2022

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón published El culto a la derrota, a translation into Spanish of Brian Price’s monograph “Cult of Defeat in Mexico’s Historical Fiction: Failure, Trauma, and Loss.” 

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón Publishes Book-length Translation

May 10, 2022

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón published El culto a la derrota, a translation into Spanish of Brian Price’s monograph “Cult of Defeat in Mexico’s Historical Fiction: Failure, Trauma, and Loss.” 

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón named a Letras Boricuas Fellow

November 29, 2021

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón was named a Letras Boricuas Fellow by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Flamboyan Foundation’s Arts Fund. The fellowship recognizes Puerto Rican writers whose dynamic work spans genres including fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and children’s literature. A first-of-its-kind fellowship, Letras Boricuas was created to identify, elevate, and amplify the voices of emerging and established Puerto Rican writers on the island and across the United States diaspora.

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón Publishes Essay and Delivers Talk

October 25, 2021

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón recently published a review-essay of Peruvian writer Claudia Ulloa Donoso's Pajarito, and delivered a talk on Mexican independence as part of the University of Buffalo's Hispanic Heritage at the Intersections of Culture and Crisis series.

New novel by Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón reviewed in Puerto Rican magazines

September 7, 2021

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón’s novel, Los días hábiles, has recently been reviewed in Puerto Rican magazines 80grados and El Roommate.

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón contributes essay

April 30, 2021

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón contributed an essay to the volume Conservative Sensibilities: The Cultural Debate over Civilization in Latin America And Spain in the 19th Century, edited by Kari Soriano Salkjelsvik (Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2021). His essay, “Aesthetics, Polemics, and God: Theological Aesthesis in the Mexican Weekly La Cruz, 1855-1858,” studies a conservative Catholic newspaper which, on the eve of the Mexican Civil War, launched a programmatic project to adapt aesthetic reflection, a form of thought associated to liberal intellectuals, to conservative and Catholic ends.

Sergio Gutierrez Negron publishes articles

October 2, 2020

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, assistant professor of Hispanic studies, published two scholarly articles. The first, SATIRE AND THE LIE OF POLITICS: EL MONO (MEXICO, 1833), studies the use of satire in 19th century Mexican conservative journalism. The second, LIBERTAD PARA LOS FEOS: LUCES ARTIFICIALES (2002) DE DANIEL SADA, theorizes the relationship between freedom, ugliness and embodiment through an engagement with a novel by Mexican writer, Daniel Sada (1953-2011).

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón Publishes Novel

July 2, 2020

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón published the novel Los días hábiles (Working Days).

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