Praise for Cultures of Devotion: Folk Saints of Spanish America:

“This is a valuable book on a topic that is only now getting the attention it warrants. Graziano’s ethnographic work brought him close to the webs of relationships within which saints become real agents in the lives of families and communities. The stories he has gathered about saints who are not approved by the church, saints who take shape on the edges of society among men and women in the most difficult circumstances, are particularly striking. Graziano reminds us that the Catholic hunger to bring heaven within reach often enough slips past the bounds set by authorities.”

—Robert Orsi, author of Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them

“Frank Graziano takes us on an exciting journey of discovery into a mysterious world where the spirits of the dead are a part of everyday life. This is a fascinating study of a very powerful religious phenomenon that is seldom recognized by mainline religious groups.”

—Virgilio Elizondo, author of A God of Incredible Surprises: Jesus of Galilee

Frank Graziano
John D. MacArthur Professor of Hispanic Studies
Chair of Hispanic Studies Department

• Latin American cultures
• Latin American fiction
• Religion in Latin America
• Theories of culture

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 has also published The Millennial New World (Oxford University Press, 1999), which 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 is accompanied by a Web site: Cultures of Devotion.

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.

Professor Graziano's active research and interdisciplinary methods translate in the classroom to innovative courses and dynamic teaching. His courses such as “Hispanic Cultures,” “Latin America in Film,” “Religion and Violence in Latin America,” “Youth in Spanish America,” and “Revolution and Counter-Revolution” have attracted a strong student following. Professor Graziano also directs the service-learning course known as Proyecto Comunidad, through which Spanish-speaking students volunteer in the Hispanic community.

Visit the Hispanic studies website.