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College of Arts and Humanities

Jaime Rodríguez Matos

Associate Professor

Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures | 559.278.8263 | Office: Peters Business Building, Room 437

jrodriguezmatos@mail.fresnostate.edu

Education

  • Ph.D.: Spanish and Portuguese: Columbia University, New York NY.

Courses Taught

HUM 20 Latin American literature in Translation; SPAN 119; SPAN 121: SPAN 125 Hispanic Culture; S140 Intro to Literary Analysis; SPAN 143 Intro to Latin American Literature; SPAN 165 Poetry Modernismo to 1950; SPAN 166 Spanish American Poetry and the Political Imagination; SPAN 170 Senior Seminarl; SPAN 202 Intro to Literary Theory; SPAN 225 Modernista to 1950 Poetry; SPAN 226 Major Hispanic Poets; SPAN 228 Contemporary Spanish American Poetry and Social Change; various Topic Courses.

I was born in Morovis, Puerto Rico (from a long line of sharecropers and field-hands who worked the land). My family moved to the United States when I was 14. My experience is fundamentally defined by this event. I eventually got a PhD from Columbia University, in the City of New York, where I for the first time truly discovered the wonders of literature, history and philosophy. My first professional appointments took me to St. Louis and to Ann Arbor, but since 2016, with family, I have made Fresno my home. There is no other place I'd rather be.


Faculty Appointments

2023-present Associate Professor. Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures. California State University, Fresno.
Latin American Poetry, History, Politics and Philosophy
Books
  • Writing of the Formless: José Lezama Lima and the End of Time. New York: Fordham. University Press, 2017.
In preparation:
  • Event, Repetition, Epoch: Nihilism and the Contemporary Latin American Imaginary.
Articles Published
  • “Infrapolitics at the End of Aesthetics.” Filozofija i društvo/Philosophy and Society. 34.1 (2023): 98-119.
  • “Poética del nihilismo: Lalo y el pensamiento en las consecuencias de Occidente.” In Aurea María Sotomayor, Ed.. Textualidades de Eduardo Lalo: el nómada enamorado del nomos. La Plata: Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación (Colectivo crítico), 2020: 45-69.
  • “Poesía de la plenitud ausente: sobre el principio imposible.”  Cuadernos de Literatura. 23.45 (2019): 125-145. 
  • “Del no-tiempo de la incertidumbre en Juan Luis Martínez” In Martínez Total. Eds.Braulio Fernández Biggs, Marcelo Rioseco. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 2016, 191-207.
  • “The Mirror of Speculative Leftism: Álvaro García Linera and the Incalculability of Politics.” Culture, Theory and Critique 56.3 (2015): 349-365.
  • “De lo que agujerea lo Real: Lacan, crítico de la (pos)hegemonía.” Debats. 128 (2015.3): 29-40.
  • “Nihilism and the Deconstruction of Time: Notes Toward Infrapolitics.” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 5.1 (2015): 36-51.
  • “After the Ruin of Thinking: From Locationalism to Infrapolitics.” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 5.1 (2015): 1-8.
  • “Más allá de la (pos)modernidad de José Lezama Lima.” In Teresa Basile and Nancy Calomarde, Eds., Lezama Lima: Orígenes, revolución y después ….. Córdoba: Corregidor, 2013: 143-161.
  • “Alejandra Pizarnik in the Psychiatric Ward: Where Everything is Possible But the Poem.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 88.5 (2011): 571-588.
  • “Pedro Juan Soto’s Spiks.” In Encyclopedia of Hispanic American Literature. Ed. Luz Elena Ramirez. New York: Facts on File, 2008. 328-329.
  • “Alurista’s Return: New and Collected Poems.” In Encyclopedia of Hispanic American Literature. Ed. Luz Elena Ramirez. New York: Facts on File, 2008. 284-286.
  • “Polyphony in Spanish Sentimental Romance.” Hispanic Review 73.2 (Spring 2005): 231-254

Invited Lectures and Conference Presentations

  • “What if Left of Filiation at the End of Time.” In the seminar: “Death and Filiation in Times of Extinction.” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). Montréal, Québec. 14-17 March 2024.
  • “To Get Out of Our Human Nook: Chance, Thinking, Literature in the Anthropocene.” Materia 22/23. A DLCL focal unit on Latinamericanist and Comparative Anthropocenic Thought. Stanford University. 16 February 2023.
  • “From the Ungrounding of History to the Age of the Poets.” MLA. 7 January 2021. Via Zoom.
  • “Poética de la intemperie.” Conversaciones a la intemperie. Presentación del libro La máquina de la salsa: tránsitos del sabor de Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia. 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos. México City. 27 May 2021. Via Zoom.
  • “Presentación del libro Writing of the Formless: José Lezama Lima and the End of Time.” Club Austral [Student Organization]. Fresno State. 29 October 2020. Via Zoom
  • “El peso más grave de la pandemia. Nietzsche, poesía, y separación del mundo.”  Seminar presentation.  ¿Separación del Mundo?. 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos. México City. 25 May 2020. Via Zoom. https://bitacoraencierro.org/expediente/el-peso-mas-grave-de-la-pandemia/
  • “Desde la otra orilla: poesía y poshegemonía en el caribe continental, sobre la poesía de Verónica Jaffé.”  Latin American Studies Association Special Seminars: Desistance and Polemics in the Caribbean, an Experimental Symposium.  University of Maryland.  September 12-14, 2019.
  • “Tonalidad epocal y poética del fin del libro: Tiqqun, o la poesía política de la actualidad.”  Conference: VI Seminario Crítico-Político Transnacional.  Universidad Complutense, Madrid.  July 2-3, 2019.
  • “Poesía, existencia, forma: sobre Mandorla de José Ángel Valente.”  Conference: Seminario de Pensamiento Contemporaneo.  Universidad de Vigo.  July 28-29, 2019.
  • “Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, poeta: de lo extraño a lo singular.”  Conference: Encuentros de Soria con el pensamiento español contemporaneo.  Rafael Sæanchez Ferlosio y la infrapolítica. Centro Internacional Antonio Machado, Soria.  June 24-26, 2019.
  • “The Great Image Has No Form, or, How Taoist Thought in Chinese Painting Can Help Us Read Poetry Anew Today.” (A lecture on François Jullien and José Ángel Valente.)  Southern California Theory Group Conference.  University of California, Irvine.  April 25, 2019.
  • “Juan Felipe Herrera’s Recasting of Spanish Poetry: Broaching into the Formless.”  Invited Lecture.  University of California, Santa Barbara.  April 24, 2019.
  • “Literary Sonority and Improvisation in Flamenco and Blues Musics.” Keynote Lecture. Music and the Written Word Symposium.  Brigham Young University, UT. December 8, 2017
  • “Sinthomic Interruptions: Poetry Against the State.”  Conference: University and State.  University of California, Irvine.  November 2-3, 2017.
  • “The Witness and the Actor: The Meaning of Violence Today.” Conference: Latin America in Theory/Theory in Latin America: Critical Violence.  University of California, Riverside.  October 27-28, 2017.
  • “2300: Poetry, History and the Question of Being.” Conference: Transformative Thinking: The 1964-1965 Seminar of Jacques Derrida. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. September 29-30, 2017
  • “Archives, Voids, Nihilism. State and University.” Invited Talk: Humanities Commons Research Cluster.  University of California, Irvine.  March 10, 2017.
  • “Paradiso 50 anos después: destiempos y modernidad.” Conference: Coloquio Internacional Sobre José Lezama Lima, La Habana, Cuba. November 16-18, 2016.
  • “Politics, Trace, Ethics: Latin Americanist Delirium.” Conference: Latin America in Theory/Theory in Latin America: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. November 11-12, 2016
  • “Infrapolitical An-archy and the Question of Time.” Conference: On Infrapolitical An-Archy: The Work of Reiner Schurmann. Sead Gallery, Bryan, Texas. January 11-12, 2016.
  • “Soberanía, traducción, tragedia, o, Hölderlin en Venezuela.” Conference: Latin American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico. May 26-31, 2015.
  • “Eduardo Lalo, la sombra del pensamiento que se ubica en las consecuencias de Occidente.” Conference: “Literatura/Posthegemonía/Infrapolítica.”Facultad de Filosofía, Universidad Complutense. Madrid, Spain. June 16-18, 2014.
  • “Ontologies of the Present and the Decolonial Option: On Santiago Castro Gómez andConsequences.” Conference Panel: Critique of Decolonial Reason. Conference: Latin American Studies Association, Chicago. May 21-24, 2014.
  • “State, Capital, Community: A Remark on the Work of Álvaro García Linera.” Conference: Democracy in the Andes: The Work of Álvaro García Linera. Texas A&M University. November 15-16, 2013.
  • “Anarchy and the Fright of the Formless in Caribbean Politics: From the HaitianRevolution to Castro.” Conference: Radical Caribbeans: Repositioning Caribbean Life. Tulane University. October 3-5, 2013
  • “Lezama, Godard, and Global Terror: One Aspect of World Literature Today.”Conference: American Comparative Literature Association. Toronto, Canada. April, 4-7, 2013.
  • “Más allá de la (post)modernidad de José Lezama Lima.” Conference: CongresoInternacional sobre el Caribe en sus literaturas y culturas: En el centenario de JoséLezama Lima. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. September 1-3, 2010
  • “Interrupting the Constitutive: Poetry in Contemporary Latin Americanism.” Conference: Latin American Studies Association, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Summer 2009.
  • “What Is to Be Done?: The University.” Keynote Lecture: Ceremony in Honor of Graduating McNair Fellows, University of New Hampshire, Durham. May 13, 2008
  • “What Is a Singular Universal?: On The Poetry of César Vallejo and Charles Olson.” Conference: 20th Century Literature and Culture Conference, University of Louisville, KY. February 22-24, 2007