Education
University of Arizona, B.A.;
University of Iowa, M.F.A.;
University of New Mexico, Ph.D.
Praise for Frank Graziano's recent books:
"Frank Graziano's Cultures of Devotion: Folk Saints of Spanish America is a delightfully well-written and critical plunge into the ethnography of pious saintly devotion. The author…has composed a book that squarely belongs in most anthropology of religion reading lists. Every so often, a disciplinary outsider jumps into an already well-trammeled field of research and, to some degree, unencumbered by its standard-normative disciplinary conventions, demonstrates the untapped reserve of its methodological and hermeneutic potentials. Graziano's ethnographic work on Latin American saints provides just this type of cross-disciplinary opening… Cultures of Devotion is a major ethnography of saintly ethics in Latin America, and it should serve as a key reference on the subject for years to come." -Anthropology and Humanism
"[an] exhaustively researched, tightly written, rigorous critical study. Wounds of Love provides a superb description and definition of the components and history of hagiography and female mysticism. [This book] not only elucidates the events specific to Rose of Lima's life, but it also clarifies many issues related to the construction of sanctity and female mysticism. It is a vital and welcome addition on Latin-American colonial women and society." -Renaissance Quarterly
"It is very difficult not to be impressed by the display of erudition and the range of problems concerning sanctity that Graziano treats in this ambitious book. A work such as this is indispensable...Its exhaustive research in primary and secondary sources, and the care with which they are duly cited, make this book an exemplary academic work." -Hispanic American Historical Review
Frank Graziano
John D. MacArthur Professor of Hispanic Studies
On Sabbatical 2011-2012 Academic Year
Joined Connecticut College: 1999
Specialization:
- Spanish American cultures
- Popular Catholicism in Spanish America
- Undocumented migration
Since the beginning of his career in 1990, Frank Graziano has written on an extraordinarily wide range of topics in Latin American culture.
His early work was on poetry, resulting among many other publications in the edited volume Semblanza de Alejandra Pizarnik (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992). Later studies resulted in Divine Violence: Spectacle, Psychosexuality, & Radical Christianity in the Argentine "Dirty War" (Westview Press 1992); and in a book, The Lust of Seeing, on the Uruguayan fiction writer Felisberto Hernández (Bucknell University Press, 1997).
Professor Graziano's more recent books have focused on religious cultures. The first of these, The Millennial New World (Oxford University Press, 1999), surveys apocalyptic, messianic, millennial, and utopian thought and action throughout the course of Latin American history. The book that followed, Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of St. Rose of Lima (Oxford University Press, 2004), received wide critical acclaim for its rigorous and innovative scholarship. Professor Graziano's most recent book, Cultures of Devotion: Folk Saints of Spanish America, was released by Oxford University Press in 2006. The book has a companion website: Cultures of Devotion.
Professor Graziano received a 2010 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to study Mexican votive paintings and the cultural context in which they are commissioned, produced, offered, displayed and viewed. The award will allow Graziano to do textual research and ethnographic fieldwork that will culminate in The Art of Gratitude: Miraculous Images & Votice Offerings in Mexico. The book will be published by Oxford University Press.
Professor Graziano also recently completed Undocumented Dominican Migration, which is forthcoming from University of Texas Press. The book analyzes the complex causation of boat migration, taking into account the interacting structural, cultural and psychological factors that motivate migrant departures. The book will have a companion website, undocumented-dominican-migration.com. Professor Graziano also organized a related conference, "Undocumented Hispanic Migration: On the Margins of a Dream," held at Connecticut College on October 16-18, 2009.
Professor Graziano is the recipient of many prestigious awards in support of his research and writing. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Carter Brown Library, the Fulbright and Fulbright-Hays Programs, and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, among many others. He has been an invited speaker at many institutions in the United States and abroad, including Boston, Brown, Duke, Emory, New York, Princeton, and Yale Universities, the Americas Society, University of London, Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano (Buenos Aires), Universidad de Buenos Aires, Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas (Cuzco), and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Lima).
Professor Graziano's active research and interdisciplinary methods translate in the classroom to innovative courses and dynamic teaching. His courses include "Religion and Violence in Latin America," "Undocumented Hispanic Immigration," "Youth in Latin America" and the survey "Hispanic Cultures."
Visit the Hispanic studies website.