Roberto Diaz

Tenure Track Appointments

• Associate Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, 1999 –
• Assistant Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, 1994 – 1999
• Assistant Professor of Spanish, Bates College, 1992 – 1994

Visiting and Temporary Appointments

• Visiting Associate Professor of Spanish, University of California, Los Angeles, Spring 2001

Summary Statement of Research Interests

Professor Díaz researches Latin American literary and cultural history with a focus on transatlantic relations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has written on multilingualism in Spanish American literature and on the prose of Borges. He is presently at work on a book-length study of opera in Latin America.

Conference Presentations

• Raptos de Europa: Prácticas de la ópera y cultura literaria en América Latina , Segundo Congreso Internacional Artes en CruceLecture/Seminar, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Invited, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010-2011
• Ultimate Passage: A Cuban Runaway Slave at the Royal Danish Theater , Second E. Allison Peers Symposium: Performing Luso-Hispanic Identities in a Transatlantic ContextKeynote Lecture, University of Liverpool, Invited, Liverpool, England, 2010-2011
• Borges’s Baroque Barbarians , The Real and the Surreal: Political Patronage and Literary Parentage in ArgentinaLecture/Seminar, USC College Commons, Invited, Los Angeles, California, 2009-2010
• Cuba and the Work of Opera , The Measure of a Revolution: Cuba, 1959-2009Talk/Oral Presentation, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 2008-2009
• Daniel Catán’s Butterflies; or, The Opera House in the Jungle , Symposium on Opera, Exoticism and Visual CultureTalk/Oral Presentation, University of London, London, England, 2008-2009
• “La sátira, la ópera y la novela: Comunidades de Alejo Carpentier” , Dixième Colloque International du Centre de Recherches Interuniversitaires sur les Champs Culturels Talk/Oral Presentation, CRICCAL / Institut du Mexique, Paris, France, 2006-2007

Other Presentations

• Hugo’s ‘Le Roi s’amuse’: The Words Before the Music of ‘Rigoletto’, Opera for Educators Program, Los Angeles, California, 2010-2011
• Wagner and the City, From Nietzche to Star Wars, The Los Angeles Ring Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2009-2010

Book Chapters

• Diaz, R. I. “Transatlantic Deficits; or, Alberto Vilar at the Royal Opera House”. Negotiating Difference in the Hispanic World The Bulletin of Latin American Research Book Series, 2010.
• Diaz, R. I. “Apariciones de Mercedes Merlin”. Cien años después Lima: Editorial de la Universidad San Martín de Porres, 2010.21-32

Encyclopedia Article

• Diaz, R. I. “Caribbean,” in “The Encyclopedia of the Novel”. 2010.

Journal Article

• Diaz, R. I. “El espíritu de Cuba y el espectro de la ópera”. Revista Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 53-54 2009:163-72
• Diaz, R. I. “The Spirit of Cuba and the Ghost of Opera”. Symposium. Vol. 61. 1 2007:57-74

• Provost’s Grant, Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Southern California, for research in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Germany and Peru, 2008-09., 2008-2009
• Rockefeller Foundation, Residency at the Bellagio Study Center, 02/03/2008 – 03/04/2008

Administrative Appointments

• Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, 2010-2011
• Co-Director, Madrid Summer Program, 05/2010 – 06/2010

Committees

• Graduate Studies Committee, Department of Comparative Literature, 08/2008 –
• Member, Advisory Board, USC Fisher Museum of Art, 09/2008 – 08/2010

Committees

• Member, Executive Committee on Cuban and Cuban Diaspora Cultural Production, Modern Language Association, 01/2011 –
• Member, Executive Committee on Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature, Modern Language Association, 01/01/2006 – 01/11/2011