Ignacio Infante

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature; Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish)
Associate Director, Center for the Humanities
Ph.D., Rutgers University
research interests:
  • Comparative Approaches to Modern Poetry
  • Modern, Modernist and Avant-Garde Poetics
  • Translation Studies
  • Iberian Cultural Studies
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    • Washington University
    • CB 1107
    • One Brookings Drive
    • St. Louis, MO 63130
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    Professor Infante’s first scholarly monograph is After Translation: The Transfer and Circulation of Modern Poetics Across the Atlantic (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013).  After Translation examines from a transnational and interlingual approach the Transatlantic flow of modern poetry and poetics, and includes chapters on poets Fernando Pessoa, Vicente Huidobro, Federico García Lorca, Kamau Brathwaite and Haroldo and Augusto de Campos among others.

    He has been the recipient of Fulbright, and Getty international fellowships, among many other academic grants and honors.  For the Committee on Comparative Literature at Washington University, Prof. Infante regularly teaches "World Literature" (CL 211), "World-wide Translation" (CL 394), and in the Translation Studies Graduate Certificate.  His courses for the Department of Romance Languages and Literatureshave generally focused on 20th-century Spain and modern transatlantic literature. Some of his courses include the survey “SPA 334: Spanish Literature II,” and the graduate seminars “The Avant-Garde in Spain: Poetry/Cinema/Visual Arts,” and “Poetics and Politics in Democratic Spain.” Since 2010 he has served as a faculty convenor of the reading group “Transatlantic Crossings” sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at Washington University.

    Selected Publications

    Books: 

    A Planetary Avant-Garde: Experimental Poetics, Transnational Literature Networks, and the Legacy of Iberian Colonialism (1909-1939). (Under contract with the University of Toronto Press).

    After Translation: The Transfer and Circulation of Modern Poetics Across the Atlantic. New York: Fordham University Press, April 2013.

    Translated Books:

    Una Ola. Translation into Spanish. John Ashbery. A Wave. Barcelona: Lumen/Random House Mondadori, 2003. Bilingual edition of John Ashbery's 1984 prize-winning poetry collection. 

    Cómo viven los muertos. Translation into Spanish. Will Self. How The Dead Live. Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2003. 

    Articles: 

    "Remaking Poetics after Postmodernism: Intertextuality, Intermediality and Cultural Circulation in the Wake of Borges.” Comparative Literature. Duke University Press. Vol. 67, no. 1, Winter 2015. 114-128.

    “Material memoria, totalitarismo y la Transición española: Recuperando a Valente y Tàpies (para un posible futuro).” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. Volume 14, 1. 2013. New York, Basingtoke (UK): Routledge, 19-35.

    "Lirismo mecánico: sobre la maquinaria de reproducción ficcional en El Aleph de Jorges Luis Borges." Revista Hispánica Moderna. The Hispanic Institute at Columbia University. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.

    "'Sex and the Luminous Interface': The Digital Vision Machine in Julio Medem's Lucía y el sexo.Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. 9.1. London: Routledge, 2008. 75-87. A formal and theoretical study of the first HD digital feature film in Spanish cinema.

    Courses Recently Taught

    • World Literature
    • Methods of Literary Study: The Theory and Practice of Literary Translation II
    • The Avant-Garde in Spain: Poetry/Visual Art/Cinema
    • World-Wide Translation
    • Modernism
    • Transatlantic Poetics