Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón

Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón published two new scholarly essays. The first, “Postmodern in a Domestic Sense: Carlos Pabón and the Postmodern Critique of the Nation in Puerto Rico, 1993–2003” , surveys and reconstructs the so-called “postmodern debate” in Puerto Rico, circa 1991–2004, by focusing on the work of a historian and critic who played a central role in this influential dispute. The second, “Labor, Colonization, and the Freedom from Restraint in Nicolás Pizarro Suárez's El monedero (1861)”, analyzes how a novel was used in the 19th century to propose a new path for the Mexican economy centered on labor.

Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón will serve as judge for the 2025 National Book Awards’ Translated Literature Award.

Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón published two new scholarly essays. The first, “The Literary Labour of Ants Refabulation, Digression, and Utopian Form in Daniel Sada’s Porque parece mentira la verdad nunca se sabe (1999)”, studies literary digression and the speculative potential of animals in fiction. The second, “La ortodoxa excentricidad de Daniel Sada: campo literario, recepción y las ansiedades de la crítica, 1979–1989”, examines the Mexican literary field of the 1980s, exploring how emerging writers navigated a landscape shaped by literary institutionalization and the restructuring of the publishing industry.

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.

Irvin E. Houck Associate Professor of Hispanic studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón received an honorable mention at the Latin American Studies Association-Mexico Section's 2023 Award for Best Book in the Humanities for his monograph, Mexico, Interrupted: Labor, Idleness, and the Economic Imaginary of Independence (Vanderbilt, 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.

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. 

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 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.

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.

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. 

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.” 

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.” 

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.

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.

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.

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 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).

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