Elisabeth L. Austin

Elisabeth L. Austin is Associate Professor of Spanish at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on reading cultures, gender, and science discourse in 19th-21st-century Spanish American narrative, poetry, and film. She is author of Exemplary Ambivalence in Late Nineteenth-Century Spanish America (Bucknell UP) and has published articles in journals such as Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Revista Hispánica Moderna, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural studies, and Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, among others. With Elena Lahr-Vivaz, she co-authored a chapter on adaptations of Cecilia Valdés in The Scandal of Adaptation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), and is co-editing a volume of essays entitled Adaptation and the Edge Effects of Latin American Cultures.

Austin’s current book project, tentatively titled The Material Turn: Science, Indigenismo, and the Rise of the Left in Peruvian Letters, 1887-1931, traces the use of scientific discourse and material thinking in modern Peru. Focusing on authors such as Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, Clorinda Matto de Turner, César Vallejo, and Magda Portal, this study explores how these writers employ science discourses to advocate for Indigenous and women’s rights from the late 19th century into the 20th. While other countries such as Mexico and Argentina practiced scientific racism as a method of exclusionary nation building during this period, this group of Peruvian authors used science to justify leftist political movements and build the nation on a foundation of human rights.