William Viestenz
9 Pleasant St SE
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Professor Viestenz specializes in modern Iberian literature and culture. He is most recently the author of By the Grace of God: Francoist Spain and the Sacred Roots of Political Imagination. In this book he constructs a theory of the sacred through a cultural analysis of Iberian literature published during Franco's dictatorship, placing the use of the sacred in this time period with current debates related to post-secularism and political theology. Authors studied in the book include Juan Benet, Juan Goytisolo, Mercè Rodoreda, Salvador Espriu, Luis Martín-Santos, and Joan Sales.
He is also the co-editor, with Joan Ramon Resina, of the volume, The New Ruralism: An Epistemology of Transformed Space, which reconsiders the time-hallowed antinomy of country and city and looks to the rural as a source of new forms of representation and temporal distribution. In addition he recently co-edited Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian Debates with Katarzyna Beilin.
He has also published on the concept of auto-fiction and second-language adoption in Josep Pla, contingency and ethics in Javier Marías's recent work, the phenomenology of memory in Jesús Moncada, amongst other studies.
Educational Background
- B.A.: Spanish, Carleton College, 2000-2004
- Ph.D: Spanish and Portuguese, Stanford University, 2007-2011
Specialties
- Contemporary Iberian Literature and Culture
- Post-Secularism and the Sacred
- Environmental Humanities
- Neo-Ruralism
- Iberian Studies
- Political Theory