Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Trans Modernismo (Birth of the Marimacho: Modernismo’s Trans* Cultural Productions in Latin America)
Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-08-31
Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The project Birth of the Marimacho: Modernismo’s Trans* Cultural Productions in Latin America analyzes the emergence of a radical gender expression in early-twentieth-century Latin American and European literature, medical science, and visual culture: the ‹‹marimacho››. In the Hispanic tradition, marimacho is the umbrella notion that may refer to a sexist slur as much as a modern form of non-binary gender, a transmasculine identification, or a lesbian identity. This investigation examines the aesthetic construction of this hybrid, counter- cultural, and gender- dissident figure in an extensive cultural repertoire that includes novels, plays, films, leaflets, medical studies, prison and mental hospital records, poems, newspaper, and tabloid articles. The research draws upon multiple theoretical schools and philosophical resources from gender and sexuality studies, especially queer theory.
Queer scholarship addresses not only the political self-representation of LGBTQ populations. Queer studies also examine major problems in minority discourse: the medical stigmas around homosexuality and transness, the non-normative/non-reproductive uses of erotic pleasures, and the broad implications of ‘gender dysphoria’ for orthodox notions of citizenship. In this sense, I examine the specificity of practices carried out by a rich plethora of fin-de-siècle Latin American female and trans*masculine subcultures as well as some figures of male queerness: uranistas and maricas (homosexuals) soldaderas (women soldiers), llaneras and linyeras (rural and transient women), cuchilleras (knife fighters), arrabaleras (tango singers), bolleras (tomboys), safistas and invertidas (lesbian & trans* masculine identities), vampiresas (criollo vernacular for hysterics), and other gender-dissident figures of the turn of the century. My analysis of the chosen corpus will demonstrate how queer men, but especially gender-non conforming women, lesbians and trans*men contested misogynist and sexual slurs by showing how gender and sexual orientation, far from being natural, are both historically constructed through performance and the adoption of diverse prosthetic artifacts, from hair and clothing to makeup and other cosmetic technologies.
The project seeks to increase the understanding of the region’s politics of gender and sexuality during the modernizing era (1880s-1930s), that is, before the solidification of LGBTQ activism, pride literature, and minority social movements of the global 1960s. A central claim of this inquiry is that in response to the new gender dynamics led by fin-de-siècle cosmopolitan networks of first-wave feminism and secret homosexual fraternities, the keepers of gender normativity created the marimacho as a monstrous version of conventional masculinity. The main objective of this research is to investigate why a broad range of cultural materials named queer men and women, non-binary individuals, and trans* populations as marimachos, as gender hackers that put at stake the futures of heteronormativity, reproduction, and family life in Latin America and beyond.
HOW DIVERSITY RESEARCH AND EDUCATION ARE CONNECTED TO GLOBAL SOCIAL JUSTICE
This project is committed to a transformative scholarly framework that validates the cultural memory of stigmatized Latin American and European gender and sexual minorities, especially European queer migrants to South America. It seeks to recognize and give visibility to the epistemic, cultural, and institutional violence historically endured by the LGBTQ community. This scheme addresses the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century legacies of homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny recorded in the literary and scientific archives of the region, with a global perspective. In my combination of literary criticism, historical work, archival research, and the critique of past sexual and medical taxonomies, I read against the grain of the original violence that represented LGBTQ peoples as abject subjects unworthy of full citizenship in the cultural production of the period 1880-1930. My research will be an opportunity to challenge past official narratives about gender and sexual minorities. A principal goal of my research is to expand the cultural history of queer Latino and European collectives. The attention to queer cultural memory will acknowledge the historical stigmatization of LGBTQ peoples persecuted by state power and endured confinement in prisons and mental hospitals in the early twentieth century. Ultimately, this is a research project that seeks historical restitution for past Latin American and European LGBTQ collectives.
PROJECT PATHWAY TO IMPACT
In addressing critical deficits in the historical and cultural knowledge of global gender and sex minorities, this project includes key pathways to impact. Thanks to the support provided by the European Commission, this project collected very rare materials findable in Latin American and European library collections. For example, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, The Ibero-American Institute of Berlin, The Schwules Museum Library of Berlin, and the Centrum Schwule Geschichte of Cologne are some of the institutes consulted. In many instances, the material collected has not been studied or sufficiently assessed by critics and historians of LGBTQ world populations from 1880 to 1930. Novels, plays, films, medical studies, and other cultural texts recreate narratives around the figure of the marimacho, underlining their leading role in questioning and redefining gender protocols. This methodology not only reveals the stigmatization endured by queer populations but also praises their resilience and contribution to global turn-of-the-century culture. The anticipated impacts of this project are both germane and far-reaching in their implications. Beyond intellectual contributions to academic thinking, the research seeks to bring social awareness by telling the often-overlooked story of attempts at breaking with the conventional system of sexual and gender differentiation in the so-called fin de siècle. This was a time of multiple anxieties about the role of men and women in the public arena. Empire, globalization, war, feminism, suffragism, and colonialism were social organizers deeply shaped by heteronormative imperatives to guarantee the continuation of the gendered status quo. In addressing these historical legacies of homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny, the project will contribute to ongoing efforts toward social justice and equality for LGBTQ communities by including a historical dimension. The recognition of historical injustices aims at providing platforms for forgotten voices and narratives concerning those who were deemed enemies of the heterosexual family and the nation. Ultimately, the findings of this project may inform present debates and policies related to gender and sexual diversity, providing historical context that highlights the long-standing nature of these challenges and the need for inclusive and equitable strategies.
Note:
For a complete and thorough report of the implementation plan see Halaburda, C. G., University of Cologne, & Schulze, P. W. (2024). Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation Plan by Carlos G Halaburda, PhD (Horizon Europe 2022, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships, Grant Number 101103095). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12174403(opens in new window)
For a complete list of the materials examined for this project see Halaburda, C. G., Schulze, P. W., & University of Cologne. (2024). Birth of the Marimacho: Modernismo's Trans* Cultural Productions in Latin America [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11384482(opens in new window)
The project Birth of the Marimacho: Modernismo’s Trans* Cultural Productions in Latin America analyzes the emergence of a radical gender expression in early-twentieth-century Latin American and European literature, medical science, and visual culture: the ‹‹marimacho››. In the Hispanic tradition, marimacho is the umbrella notion that may refer to a sexist slur as much as a modern form of non-binary gender, a transmasculine identification, or a lesbian identity. This investigation examines the aesthetic construction of this hybrid, counter- cultural, and gender- dissident figure in an extensive cultural repertoire that includes novels, plays, films, leaflets, medical studies, prison and mental hospital records, poems, newspaper, and tabloid articles. The research draws upon multiple theoretical schools and philosophical resources from gender and sexuality studies, especially queer theory.
Queer scholarship addresses not only the political self-representation of LGBTQ populations. Queer studies also examine major problems in minority discourse: the medical stigmas around homosexuality and transness, the non-normative/non-reproductive uses of erotic pleasures, and the broad implications of ‘gender dysphoria’ for orthodox notions of citizenship. In this sense, I examine the specificity of practices carried out by a rich plethora of fin-de-siècle Latin American female and trans*masculine subcultures as well as some figures of male queerness: uranistas and maricas (homosexuals) soldaderas (women soldiers), llaneras and linyeras (rural and transient women), cuchilleras (knife fighters), arrabaleras (tango singers), bolleras (tomboys), safistas and invertidas (lesbian & trans* masculine identities), vampiresas (criollo vernacular for hysterics), and other gender-dissident figures of the turn of the century. My analysis of the chosen corpus will demonstrate how queer men, but especially gender-non conforming women, lesbians and trans*men contested misogynist and sexual slurs by showing how gender and sexual orientation, far from being natural, are both historically constructed through performance and the adoption of diverse prosthetic artifacts, from hair and clothing to makeup and other cosmetic technologies.
The project seeks to increase the understanding of the region’s politics of gender and sexuality during the modernizing era (1880s-1930s), that is, before the solidification of LGBTQ activism, pride literature, and minority social movements of the global 1960s. A central claim of this inquiry is that in response to the new gender dynamics led by fin-de-siècle cosmopolitan networks of first-wave feminism and secret homosexual fraternities, the keepers of gender normativity created the marimacho as a monstrous version of conventional masculinity. The main objective of this research is to investigate why a broad range of cultural materials named queer men and women, non-binary individuals, and trans* populations as marimachos, as gender hackers that put at stake the futures of heteronormativity, reproduction, and family life in Latin America and beyond.
HOW DIVERSITY RESEARCH AND EDUCATION ARE CONNECTED TO GLOBAL SOCIAL JUSTICE
This project is committed to a transformative scholarly framework that validates the cultural memory of stigmatized Latin American and European gender and sexual minorities, especially European queer migrants to South America. It seeks to recognize and give visibility to the epistemic, cultural, and institutional violence historically endured by the LGBTQ community. This scheme addresses the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century legacies of homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny recorded in the literary and scientific archives of the region, with a global perspective. In my combination of literary criticism, historical work, archival research, and the critique of past sexual and medical taxonomies, I read against the grain of the original violence that represented LGBTQ peoples as abject subjects unworthy of full citizenship in the cultural production of the period 1880-1930. My research will be an opportunity to challenge past official narratives about gender and sexual minorities. A principal goal of my research is to expand the cultural history of queer Latino and European collectives. The attention to queer cultural memory will acknowledge the historical stigmatization of LGBTQ peoples persecuted by state power and endured confinement in prisons and mental hospitals in the early twentieth century. Ultimately, this is a research project that seeks historical restitution for past Latin American and European LGBTQ collectives.
PROJECT PATHWAY TO IMPACT
In addressing critical deficits in the historical and cultural knowledge of global gender and sex minorities, this project includes key pathways to impact. Thanks to the support provided by the European Commission, this project collected very rare materials findable in Latin American and European library collections. For example, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, The Ibero-American Institute of Berlin, The Schwules Museum Library of Berlin, and the Centrum Schwule Geschichte of Cologne are some of the institutes consulted. In many instances, the material collected has not been studied or sufficiently assessed by critics and historians of LGBTQ world populations from 1880 to 1930. Novels, plays, films, medical studies, and other cultural texts recreate narratives around the figure of the marimacho, underlining their leading role in questioning and redefining gender protocols. This methodology not only reveals the stigmatization endured by queer populations but also praises their resilience and contribution to global turn-of-the-century culture. The anticipated impacts of this project are both germane and far-reaching in their implications. Beyond intellectual contributions to academic thinking, the research seeks to bring social awareness by telling the often-overlooked story of attempts at breaking with the conventional system of sexual and gender differentiation in the so-called fin de siècle. This was a time of multiple anxieties about the role of men and women in the public arena. Empire, globalization, war, feminism, suffragism, and colonialism were social organizers deeply shaped by heteronormative imperatives to guarantee the continuation of the gendered status quo. In addressing these historical legacies of homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny, the project will contribute to ongoing efforts toward social justice and equality for LGBTQ communities by including a historical dimension. The recognition of historical injustices aims at providing platforms for forgotten voices and narratives concerning those who were deemed enemies of the heterosexual family and the nation. Ultimately, the findings of this project may inform present debates and policies related to gender and sexual diversity, providing historical context that highlights the long-standing nature of these challenges and the need for inclusive and equitable strategies.
Note:
For a complete and thorough report of the implementation plan see Halaburda, C. G., University of Cologne, & Schulze, P. W. (2024). Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation Plan by Carlos G Halaburda, PhD (Horizon Europe 2022, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships, Grant Number 101103095). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12174403(opens in new window)
For a complete list of the materials examined for this project see Halaburda, C. G., Schulze, P. W., & University of Cologne. (2024). Birth of the Marimacho: Modernismo's Trans* Cultural Productions in Latin America [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11384482(opens in new window)
Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far
1. Explanation of the work carried out by the beneficiaries and overview of the progress
The main objective of Trans Modernismo (the short name of this project) was to write the history of a literary construction as much as a scientific one, that is, a history of the marimacho. In five essays, this intellectual inquiry shows the multiple faces, dimensions, cultural manifestations, and political involvement of this gender expression. After having completed the bibliographic review and data collection of this project, the research was reorganized and improved, and the results are outstanding. My dataset was published in Zenodo/OpenAire, a repository funded by the EU, and has now numerous views by other researchers interested in gender and sexuality literary scholarship.
Articles are dedicated, for example, to the New Woman, the flapper, the garçonne, the masculine woman, (and the feminine men) as portrayed in numerous literary works. The study of many famous queer and gender-non-conforming figures such as Josephine Baker, Emilia Pardo Bazán, George Sand, Azucena Maizani, and Emmeline Pankhurst, among others, show the multiple anxieties over the futures of femininity and masculinity in the period 1880-1930, especially in the Latin American and the European press. The research questions that guide this MSCA project are: 1) What gendered logics, racial formats, and discursive mechanisms of sexual exclusion did modernista & avant-garde writers use to construct the marimacho as a public enemy? 2) How and why did writers and medical experts engage with tropes of world literary traditions—notions of Greek love, vampirism, primitivism, orientalism, teratology, and sexual inversion— to define the marimacho as a danger to fin-de-siècle bourgeois society? And 3) What aesthetic practices such as clothing, hair, makeup, fashion, tattooing, sports, dancing, poetics, and musical performances did queer women, non-binary peoples, and trans* men use to contest naturalized notions of femininity and masculinity?
There is a great need to understand how the feminist movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries caused a crisis in the traditional ways of representing gender relations. Scholars have explored the modernista movement’s artistic refinement as the product of an affirmation of Latin America’s new status within global literary traditions. Modernismo initiated an internationalist forum of discussion led by an emerging generation of professional writers, whose cosmopolitan gestures differentiated them from former colonial intellectual structures. In their works, this new intelligentsia identified queerness as simulation and trickery, adulteration and impurity, madness, and perversion. However, academic scholarship gave little attention to the stigma that queer women, non-binary peoples, and trans* men received in this network of cisgender male privilege, that is, intellectual men whose gender identity corresponded to the sex assigned at birth. Birth of the Marimacho expands the knowledge of how the cult of female beauty and fecundity, political submission, and domesticity depended upon featuring gender non-conforming individuals as aberration, as foreign entities that hacked binary systems of sex-gender representation and cis- heteronormativity.
1.1 Objectives
Formal goals of this Marie Skłodowska Curie Action (MSCA) have been to maximize expected outcomes and impacts. During the implementation, my project’s target audience included: (1) academic institutions; (2) cultural centers; (3) the LGBTQ+ community, and (4) the general public. The specific objectives were (1) academic publications; (2) conference presentations; (3) collaboration with European cultural institutions; (3) educational materials; (4) digital presence (5) community engagement; and (6) public outreach. As indicated in the amendment, this MSCA project terminates in month 10 to begin a new position as a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at a leading American University, The University of Chicago. The goals and objectives of the 10 months of implementation of the Action outlined in the proposal have been fully met and the results exceed the stated expectations in the proposal.
1.2 Explanation of the work carried per Work Package
Work executed during the implementation of this fellowship was credited in the original proposal to five well-stipulated work packages. The following report summarizes the products and outcomes of each work package (WP). During my time as an MSCA Research Fellow, I worked at the University of Cologne’s Department of Romance Studies and the Portuguese-Brazilian Institute (PBI) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Peter W. Schulze. I was also designated Associate Fellow of the Erich Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies and Visiting Fellow of the Global South Studies Center, both University of Cologne's institutions. During my MSCA tenure, besides research work, I built networks and collaborative workgroups with several European, Latin American, and North American Universities. The accomplishments reported in this document reflect the superb academic environment at the University of Cologne and my continuing affiliations with global institutions of higher learning.
1.2.1 Work Package 1
WP I Review / Bibliography of Modernist Latin American LGBTQ Literature & Culture
Gender and sexuality have played a critical role in Latin American citizenship and nationhood. But these body markers have also been crucial for the modern history of Latin American literature and science. Modernismo, a fin-de-siècle aesthetic movement famous for its cosmopolitan imprint and revolutionary poetics, became a platform to represent the exotic, the extravagant, and the monstrous. Strongly influenced by European symbolists and decadent aesthetics, psychiatry and criminology, modernismo’s scandalous sexual images and gender-dissident characters contrasted deeply with the hidden eroticism of the romantic period and with naturalism’s anatomical explanations of human desire. However, the treatment of sexual transgression and gender-bending practices in modernista and avant-garde productions operated much through condemnation rather than casting queerness as a valid expression of marginalized identities. Class, racial, gender, and sexual conflicts were instead thematized through the language of legal medicine to suggest that society needed to be defended against degeneration if the continent were to become modern and Latin American culture to achieve world status. Recent critical projects on representations of deviance in Latin American modernismo & avant-gardes have argued that the somatic fiction of sexual abnormality was the effect of a literary system that reproduced ideas about body normativity while identifying queerness and transness as unnameable experiences of embodiment, a monstrosity. While these investigations have mainly explored portrayals of dandyism, feminine men, and male homosexuality, much broader cultural frameworks contributed to both the stability and instability of gender and sexual protocols in Latin America’s modernization period (1880-1930). Scholars emphasized how queer men embodied alternative forms of femininity that weakened male sexual hegemony and the consequent reproduction of the binary of gender. Nonetheless, experts have nearly ignored how queer women, non-binary individuals, and trans* men, pejoratively called marimachos in the vernacular culture, contested homogeneous notions of masculinity inexorably tied to cisgender male bodies. Birth of the Marimacho argues that this historical gender expression emerged in the aesthetic experiments of modernista and avant-garde writers as a multi-faceted counter-cultural identity that disputed body binarism and late-nineteenth-century concepts of womanhood, decorum, femininity, and maternity as well as traditional notions of masculinity generating a long-lasting power struggle that reaches present days.
The objective of WP1 was to select the methodological and theoretical tools needed to write the essays and design a successful implementation plan. This project draws upon multiple theoretical schools and philosophical resources from gender and sexuality studies. Queer scholarship addresses not only the political self-representation of LGBTQ bodies. Queer studies also examine major problems in minority discourse: the medical stigmas around homosexuality and transness, the non-normative/non-reproductive uses of erotic pleasures, and the broad implications of ‘gender dysphoria’ for orthodox notions of citizenship. The following deliverables were listed in the fellowship application for WP1: 1) updated scholarly review of LGBTQ-related Modernist Latin American Literature. Under WP1, I produced a complete dataset where the entire project is outlined, listing more than two hundred primary sources consulted and an updated critical bibliography that evidence an ambitious digital and non-digital archival workplan involving European and Latin American archives.
The data set can be found here:
Halaburda, C. G., Schulze, P. W., & University of Cologne. (2024). Birth of the Marimacho: Modernismo's Trans* Cultural Productions in Latin America [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11384482(opens in new window)
WP 1 was fully achieved.
1.2.2 Work Package 2
WP II Data collection, fieldwork, and writing
The objectives of WP2 were to conduct archival work in different countries such as Germany, France, Mexico, Spain, and Argentina in national & university digital and non-digital libraries. This stage focused on the meticulous selection of archival sources during fieldwork to then write the first drafts of the project. The following archival institutions were consulted during the implementation of the plan:
Visited in person and consulted digitally:
The United Kingdom
• Manchester Central Library, Microfilm Collections on British Suffragism and World Feminist Networks. https://www.manchester.gov.uk/centrallibrary(opens in new window)
• Library Archive of the People’s History Museum of Manchester. https://phm.org.uk(opens in new window)
France
• Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship. The printed materials were consulted during a research visit in June 2024 https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en(opens in new window)
Germany
• National Socialism Documentation Center of Cologne. The Printed Materials of the Gender and Sexuality Collection of the NS DOK center were consulted in October 2023 and April 2024. https://museenkoeln.de/ns-dokumentationszentrum/default.aspx?s=315(opens in new window)
• Berlin Ibero-American Institute. The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship. The printed materials were consulted during a research visit in May 2024: https://www.iai.spk-berlin.de/startseite.html(opens in new window)
• Gay History Center of Cologne (Centrum Schwule Geschichte). https://www.csgkoeln.org/(opens in new window). Visited in April 2024. German Sexology and Gay Magazines.
• Schwules Museum of Berlin. https://www.schwulesmuseum.de/?lang=en(opens in new window). Consulted during a research trip in May 2024.
Consulted exclusively digitally:
Spain
Hemeroteca Nacional de España. The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship https://www.bne.es/es/catalogos/hemeroteca-digital(opens in new window)
Mexico
Hemeroteca Nacional de México. The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship. https://www.hndm.unam.mx/index.php/es/(opens in new window)
Argentina
Archivo Histórico de Revistas Argentinas (AHIRA). The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship. https://ahira.com.ar(opens in new window)
United States
The Internet Archive. The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship https://archive.org/(opens in new window)
In the MSCA grant application, fieldwork and data collection were promised under WP2. Under WP2, however, the Fellow, in consultation with the supervisor, launched a multidimensional work plan that potentiated research, networking, and quality of the results. The list of documents produced as a result of this ambitious archival work is specified below and exceeds the stated expectations.
Under WPII, while collecting my sources and analyzing the material, I produced seven conference papers. One paper was published in Zenodo and available online in video format in collaboration with the University of Leeds’ Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. Based on the research conducted in this period of 10 months, and always in consultation with my supervisor to ensure quality and proper development of all the dimensions of this fellowship (research, dissemination, and training), I produced:
1) Seven conference papers; 2) two online conferences with guest speakers Dr. Facundo Abal from Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Argentina, and PhD candidate Jesse Rothbard, Northwestern University, United States; 3) a Third Mission public lecture; 4) a complete dataset where the entire project is outlined, listing more than two hundred primary sources that evidence an striving digital and non-digital archival workplan involving European and Latin American archives; 5) a complete career development plan; 5) a complete data management plan; and 6) an advanced seminar in Queer Latin American Literature that I taught at the Department of Romance Studies of the University of Cologne in the course of thirteen weeks, from October 2023 to February 2024. Details on all these achievements are provided below:
Publications:
Halaburda, C. G., Schulze, P. W., & University of Cologne. (2024). Birth of the Marimacho: Modernismo's Trans* Cultural Productions in Latin America [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11384482(opens in new window)
Recorded video conference:
University of Leeds, Simonetto, P., & Halaburda, C. G. (2023, November 16). A Sentimental Disability: Queer Melodrama, Gender Deviance, and Crip Bodies in 20th Century Argentine Theatre. A Sentimental Disability: Queer Melodrama, Gender Deviance, and Crip Bodies in 20th Century Argentine Theatre, University of Leeds. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11388057(opens in new window)
Teaching materials:
Halaburda, C. G. (2024, May 30). Programa de seminario avanzado. América Latina LGBTQ: escenas de la literatura, la ciencia y la cultura visual en contexto global (s XIX-XX-XXI). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11395388(opens in new window)
The conference papers outlined below were delivered at 1) The University of Leeds; 2) The University of Manchester; 3) the Global South Studies Center of the University of Cologne; 4) The University of Chicago; 5) The Modern Language Association Convention Philadelphia 2024; and 6) the Latin American Studies Association Convention, Bogotá 2024 (online). These conference papers presented advanced results and were key pathways to the final shaping of the articles outlined in the dataset with their final titles. Currently, two papers are in advanced stage for submission and three are outlined, exceeding the original expectations of the original plan.
Conferences as main speaker:
1. 15/11/2023. 10am. The University of Leeds, Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. A Sentimental Disability. See details and the lecture here: https://gender-studies.leeds.ac.uk/carlos-halaburdas-presentation-queer-crip-theory-workshop/(opens in new window)
2. 15/11/2023. 17hs. The University of Manchester. Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. A Cosmopolitan Uranism. See details here: https://events.manchester.ac.uk/event/event:k25x-lnxek6jr-adurag/carlos-halaburda-university-of-cologne-a-cosmopolitan-uranism-queer-networks-of-scandal-in-the-global-nineteenth-century(opens in new window)
3. 28/11/2023. 12hs. The University of Cologne. The Global South Studies Center. Paper The Garçonne Scandal. See details here: https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/veranstaltungen/gssc-seminar-reihe/gs-23-11-28-halaburda(opens in new window)
4. The Modern Language Association Convention 2024. Phil
adelphia, USA. from 4 to 7 January. Paper “Eugenics Scripted: Reading Disability in the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut Theatre Archive,” Carlos Gustavo Halaburda (U of Cologne). https://www.k-saa.org/blog/romanticism-and-related-panels-at-mla-24(opens in new window)
5. Presentation at the University of Chicago. Argentina’s Villainous Reproduction: Melodrama and the Making of Queerness and Disability in the Age of Eugenics. USA. 10/1/2024. https://voices.uchicago.edu/latinamericancarib/(opens in new window)
6. The Latin American Studies Association Congress, Bogotá, Colombia. June 12-
15. Online. Main Activities at LASA:
1. presented the paper Una lágrima para el atorrante: Capacitismo finisecular, sentimentalismo crip y el flâneur orillero in the Panel entitled Moda, alimentación, imagen: Estéticas higienistas del cuerpo finisecular - Parte 1'
2. participated in the Workshop entitled 'Drag Kings: Arqueología crítica de masculinidades espectaculares en Latinx América'
3. served as Session Organizer for the Workshop entitled 'Preconferencia de la sección Siglo XIX de LASA'
4. served as Session Organizer for the LASA Section Panel entitled 'Magic, Science, Spectacle: Exhibition and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Popular Venues'
5. served as Session Organizer for the Panel entitled 'Moda, alimentación, imagen: Estéticas higienistas del cuerpo finisecular - Parte 1'
6. served as Session Organizer for the Panel entitled 'Moda, alimentación, imagen: Estéticas higienistas del cuerpo finisecular - Parte 2'
7. served as Session Organizer for the LASA Intersection Panel entitled 'Los desafíos del archivo efímero en América Latina'
8. served as Chair for the LASA Section Panel entitled 'LGBTQ Fin de Siècle in Latin America'
9. served as Chair for the Roundtable entitled 'Crime Fiction from North to South: The Latin American Noir Revisited'
7) Marie Jahoda Center for International Gender Studies. Ruhr University Bochum. Fr, 21. Juni 2024, 12-14 Uhr, Uni 105 E/14 und Zoom: Prof. Dr. Carlos Halaburda (Universität zu Köln): Latin America’s Queer Anatomy in Belle Époque Paris: Paul Groussac, Gabriel Yturri, and Abject Glamour. https://mariejahodacenter.rub.de/veranstaltung/ag-maennlichkeiten-carlos-g-halaburda-latin-americas-queer-anatomy-in-belle-epoque-paris-paul-groussac-gabriel-yturri-and-abject-glamour/(opens in new window) POSTPONED for November 2024.
Conferences as Moderator and Organizer:
1. Un tornado alrededor. (A Tornado Surrounding Us). Conversation with Dr. Facundo Abal about his Argentine coming-of-age queer novel. 27/10/2023. Online.
2. The Woman Who Loved Horses: Gambling and Sapphic Pleasures in the Uruguayan Novecientos. 28/11/2023. Online. 4pm Cologne. Guest Lecture with Jesse Rothbard, PhD Candidate Northwestern University USA.
Third Mission Public Lecture:
1. Amor, Literatura y Diversidad con Carlos Halaburda. March 15, 2024. Miércoles 10 de Abril 2024 a las 20 h in MACHADO. https://spanischer-verein.com/?p=5957(opens in new window)
The aim of this Third Mission initiative at the Antonio Machado Center in Cologne was to share research findings with a wider audience, including the LGBTQ community, and to establish a platform where public feedback could shape my ongoing research project. The goal is to continue refining methods to share my research through museums, educational and cultural institutions, and various public media formats to present and advance current research in global queer studies. See Dissemination, Communication, and Exploitation plan for more details below.
Project deliverables:
Data Management Plan:
Schulze, P. W., Halaburda, C. G., & University of Cologne. (2024). Data Management Plan by Carlos G Halaburda, PhD (Horizon Europe 2022, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships, Grant Number 101103095). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11389869(opens in new window)
Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation Plan:
Halaburda, C. G., University of Cologne, & Schulze, P. W. (2024). Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation Plan by Carlos G Halaburda, PhD (Horizon Europe 2022, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships, Grant Number 101103095). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12174403(opens in new window)
Career Development Plan:
Halaburda, C. G., Schulze, P. W., & University of Cologne. (2024). Career Development Plan by Carlos G Halaburda, PhD (Horizon Europe 2022, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships, Grant Number 101103095). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11390426(opens in new window)
1.2.3 Work Package 3
WP III Analysis of the material and writing
The objective of WP3 was to develop and apply different tools and resources of queer and trans* theory to analyze the collected documents and establish the epistemological conditions in which the construction of the marimacho took place at the turn of the century (19th-20th centuries). The emphasis was to trace how the experimental connections between literature, sexology, and visual culture led to the emergence of this popular counter-cultural figure. The deliverable promised in the MSCA application was to deliver a book outline of the multiple constructions of the marimacho, which was fully achieved as evidenced by the publication of the dataset. See Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11384482(opens in new window)
In addition, two articles were drafted by month 10: 1) Buenos Aires’ Machona Affair:
French Queerness and the Reception of Victor Margueritte’s La Garçonne in 1920s Argentina; and 2) A Cosmopolitan Scandal: Homosexuality’s Sensorial Transgressions in Global Nineteenth Century Forensic Literature. I was able to exceed expectations by conducting a thorough book outline while advancing in individual articles written in English that will be reorganized, updated, and published in Spanish in a collected essay book, possibly by an Argentine press (Universidad Nacional de la Plata) in order to extend my reach farther across Europe and the Americas. For more details, see the DCE plan for further details.Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12174403(opens in new window)
1.2.4 Work Package 4
WP IV Specific training skills
The objective of WP 4 was to improve aptitudes in research and education and advance the fellow’s network with European scholars in the Humanities. During my 10-month residence at the University of Cologne, I strengthened my training by partaking in specific actions. In the proposal, I promised to audit a course offered by the Department of Romance Studies to gain pedagogical experience and develop new teaching skills. This activity was fully achieved. I also promised to participate in other departmental activities to gain experience in service and administration, another initiative fully attained. In addition, I taught an advanced seminar on Queer Latin American Literature in the Romance Studies Department, which provided me with international (European) experience in graduate teaching.
This work package was particularly successful as the completion of major training skill activities by month 10 generated valuable experience. By observing my supervisor’s teaching and by teaching my own course, the intention of WP 4 was also to conduct a transfer of knowledge to my host institution. During the tenure of my fellowship, besides teaching, I completed training workshops in the European academic job market, grant management, and collaboration research and multi-party grants. In addition, I attended numerous conferences and symposia, whose details are provided below.
I shall stress that training and knowledge transfer took place both ways. Just as I received training from the Dept. 43, Human Resources Development for Researchers at the University of Cologne, I also provided leadership skills to the profession by serving as the Chair of the Nineteenth Century Section of the Latin American Studies Association. Having a Marie Skłodowska Curie research fellowship at UniKöln allowed me to benefit from a vast array of learning experiences and professional opportunities. I summarize below these initiatives that advanced my academic training.
I report: 1) Training workshops completed; 2) Leadership in publishing; 3) Leadership in academic networking; 4) Leadership in mentoring and supervision; 5) Training conferences completed; and 6) certifications obtained.
Training workshops completed (5):
1. The Welcome Center. Getting to Know Germany Workshop. 10.04.2024. 16hs-18hs. Lecture about cultural diversity in Germany. Judith Berns.
2. Universität zu Köln, Der Kanzler. Dezernat 4 Personal. Personalentwicklung Wissenschaft. How to Become a Professor in Germany Online Workshop. 17.04.2024. 9hs-14:30hs. Job Documents, Job Interview, Negotiations. https://fortbildung.uni-koeln.de/veranstaltungsangebot/index_ger.html(opens in new window)
3. Universität zu Köln Global South Studies Center Workshop. Inclusion and Symmetrical Participation in Knowledge Production. The workshop is organised by the Co-Producing Knowledge (Thematic Group) of the GSSC, Cologne. 24.04.2024—25.04.2024. 14-18hs. https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/veranstaltungen/workshops/ws-24-04-24inclusion-and-symmetrical-participation-in-knowledge-production#c163523(opens in new window)
The workshop, "lnclusion and Symmetrical Participation in Knowledge Production," laid the groundwork for establishing an orientation and priorities for the GSSC thematic group "Co-producing Knowledge". The objective is to initiate dialogue and foster conversation on perspectives and practices that promote inclusion and symmetry among all actors involved in research processes, including but not restricted to researchers, co-researchers, collaborators, and other research participants (including non-human actors) who are part of the co-production of knowledge. Additionally, this workshop served to identify specific topics, sites, and ideas on which to focus on the future, as well as relevant analytic frameworks to guide conversations. The discussions at the workshop focused on key questions, such as how to integrate and enhance inclusive methodological and conceptual frameworks in research, from design to publication, address practical and epistemological concerns important to research subjects, and find ways to strengthen an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to joint knowledge production.
4. Human Resources Development Continuous Development Programme, University of Cologne. Professor wanted! Planning and optimising your academic career (Online). Staff in Research. 2-day event. Tuesday, May 28, 2024, 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM, Virtueller Raum 7. Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM, Virtueller Raum 7.
Contents:
Peer learning as well as individual coaching sessions
Requirements for a long-term career in academia
Analysis of the individual current situation
Reviewing the current academic profile
Development and specification of the next goals and planning of the next steps
5. Human Resources Development Continuous Development Programme, University of Cologne. Project Management (Online) Staff in Research. Tuesday, June 4, 2024, 09:00 AM - 04:30 PM, Virtueller Raum 3.
Contents:
Traditional vs. Agile project management: opportunities and limits
Particular challenges of project management in scientific organizations
Principles of project planning and controlling
Project leadership: roles, responsibilities, skills
Toolbox: project management techniques and methods
Leadership in publishing:
During the implementation of the action, I was appointed and fulfilled the role of peer reviewer for two leading academic journals in my field:
• Feminist Studies. University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland (2023-Present)
• Modern Language Review, Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) (2023-Present)
I also serve as an expert advisor in the following journals:
Hispanic Review, University of Pennsylvania, United States
Revista Iberoamericana. University of Pittsburgh, United States
Hispania, John Hopkins University, United States
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, Syracuse University, United States
Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana. Arizona State University, United States
Revista Letras. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru
Revista Desde el Sur. Universidad Científica del Sur, Lima, Peru
Revista ZUR. Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco, Chile
Leadership in academic networking:
Leadership opportunities in academic networking that arose from this MSCA fellowship include:
2023-2025 Chair of the LASA Nineteenth Century Section. https://sections.lasaweb.org/sections/nineteenthcentury/?pg=5(opens in new window)
2023-2024 Visiting Fellow with the University of Cologne Global South Studies Center. See details here: https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/personen/gastwissenschaftlerinnen/halaburda-carlos(opens in new window)
2023-2024 Affiliation to the Erich Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies. Associate fellow (University of Cologne). See details here: https://auerbach-institut.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/en/fellows-and-hosts/associated-fellows-and-hosts/carlos-halaburda-peter-w-schulze(opens in new window)
2023-2024 Affiliation to the Portuguese Brazilian Institute (University of Cologne)
2023-2024 Affiliation to the Department of Romance Studies (University of Cologne)
Leadership in mentoring and supervision
I provided leadership in grant writing and academic job market documents, assisting three PhD students in the United States (Northwestern University) and colleagues in Canada in obtaining postdoctoral funding, for example, from The University of Toronto’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
In my course AMÉRICA LATINA LGBTQ at the University of Cologne, I taught and supervised advanced papers written by my Master's students at the UniKoln’s Teaching Program. The students’ final papers examined issues such as Anti-LGBTQ violence in the context of human rights violations in 20th century Latin America, homosexuality and the Cuban revolution, LGBTQ prison writing, and medical representations of queerness.
This MSCA fellowship aims to expand career opportunities, and it has certainly succeeded in this mission. I was appointed Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago as of July 2024, a pioneer institution in queer theory, gender and sexuality and Latin American studies. I am bringing the expertise developed and refined during my tenure as an MSCA Fellow and I am certain that this experience will contribute to a successful career in the future.
Training conferences completed (22):
Attending conferences and seminars led by colleagues in other disciplines was vital for my MSCA postdoctoral experience in Europe. It fostered interdisciplinary collaboration as these academic gatherings provided opportunities to explore how gender and sexuality intersect with diverse fields such as art history, comparative literature, and ecocriticism. Engaging with varied perspectives enhanced my ability to analyze my history of queer women in broader cultural, social, and environmental contexts. For instance, learning about issues of gender from the perspective of environmental studies allowed me to see the ways gendered experiences intersect with ecological issues, as evidenced in a series of talks at the Global South Studies Center of UniKoln. Attending events leads to innovative research projects and publications that push the boundaries of traditional gender and sexuality studies and that is why I invested the time in interacting with experts in fields such as ethnomusicology and African studies, for example, which can uncover the intersections of gender, race, and historical trauma, providing a deeper understanding of historical and contemporary social issues. As a result of this intensive involvement in events organized by colleagues, I participated in a concert at the Spanish cultural center of Cologne, Antonio Machado Center, with ethnomusicologist Luis Gimenez, singing Spanish songs about diaspora and migration. With Luis, I am planning a record an album with songs related to the marimacho in Spanish and Argentine culture. This album will
be recorded possibly in Chicago in the s
The main objective of Trans Modernismo (the short name of this project) was to write the history of a literary construction as much as a scientific one, that is, a history of the marimacho. In five essays, this intellectual inquiry shows the multiple faces, dimensions, cultural manifestations, and political involvement of this gender expression. After having completed the bibliographic review and data collection of this project, the research was reorganized and improved, and the results are outstanding. My dataset was published in Zenodo/OpenAire, a repository funded by the EU, and has now numerous views by other researchers interested in gender and sexuality literary scholarship.
Articles are dedicated, for example, to the New Woman, the flapper, the garçonne, the masculine woman, (and the feminine men) as portrayed in numerous literary works. The study of many famous queer and gender-non-conforming figures such as Josephine Baker, Emilia Pardo Bazán, George Sand, Azucena Maizani, and Emmeline Pankhurst, among others, show the multiple anxieties over the futures of femininity and masculinity in the period 1880-1930, especially in the Latin American and the European press. The research questions that guide this MSCA project are: 1) What gendered logics, racial formats, and discursive mechanisms of sexual exclusion did modernista & avant-garde writers use to construct the marimacho as a public enemy? 2) How and why did writers and medical experts engage with tropes of world literary traditions—notions of Greek love, vampirism, primitivism, orientalism, teratology, and sexual inversion— to define the marimacho as a danger to fin-de-siècle bourgeois society? And 3) What aesthetic practices such as clothing, hair, makeup, fashion, tattooing, sports, dancing, poetics, and musical performances did queer women, non-binary peoples, and trans* men use to contest naturalized notions of femininity and masculinity?
There is a great need to understand how the feminist movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries caused a crisis in the traditional ways of representing gender relations. Scholars have explored the modernista movement’s artistic refinement as the product of an affirmation of Latin America’s new status within global literary traditions. Modernismo initiated an internationalist forum of discussion led by an emerging generation of professional writers, whose cosmopolitan gestures differentiated them from former colonial intellectual structures. In their works, this new intelligentsia identified queerness as simulation and trickery, adulteration and impurity, madness, and perversion. However, academic scholarship gave little attention to the stigma that queer women, non-binary peoples, and trans* men received in this network of cisgender male privilege, that is, intellectual men whose gender identity corresponded to the sex assigned at birth. Birth of the Marimacho expands the knowledge of how the cult of female beauty and fecundity, political submission, and domesticity depended upon featuring gender non-conforming individuals as aberration, as foreign entities that hacked binary systems of sex-gender representation and cis- heteronormativity.
1.1 Objectives
Formal goals of this Marie Skłodowska Curie Action (MSCA) have been to maximize expected outcomes and impacts. During the implementation, my project’s target audience included: (1) academic institutions; (2) cultural centers; (3) the LGBTQ+ community, and (4) the general public. The specific objectives were (1) academic publications; (2) conference presentations; (3) collaboration with European cultural institutions; (3) educational materials; (4) digital presence (5) community engagement; and (6) public outreach. As indicated in the amendment, this MSCA project terminates in month 10 to begin a new position as a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at a leading American University, The University of Chicago. The goals and objectives of the 10 months of implementation of the Action outlined in the proposal have been fully met and the results exceed the stated expectations in the proposal.
1.2 Explanation of the work carried per Work Package
Work executed during the implementation of this fellowship was credited in the original proposal to five well-stipulated work packages. The following report summarizes the products and outcomes of each work package (WP). During my time as an MSCA Research Fellow, I worked at the University of Cologne’s Department of Romance Studies and the Portuguese-Brazilian Institute (PBI) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Peter W. Schulze. I was also designated Associate Fellow of the Erich Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies and Visiting Fellow of the Global South Studies Center, both University of Cologne's institutions. During my MSCA tenure, besides research work, I built networks and collaborative workgroups with several European, Latin American, and North American Universities. The accomplishments reported in this document reflect the superb academic environment at the University of Cologne and my continuing affiliations with global institutions of higher learning.
1.2.1 Work Package 1
WP I Review / Bibliography of Modernist Latin American LGBTQ Literature & Culture
Gender and sexuality have played a critical role in Latin American citizenship and nationhood. But these body markers have also been crucial for the modern history of Latin American literature and science. Modernismo, a fin-de-siècle aesthetic movement famous for its cosmopolitan imprint and revolutionary poetics, became a platform to represent the exotic, the extravagant, and the monstrous. Strongly influenced by European symbolists and decadent aesthetics, psychiatry and criminology, modernismo’s scandalous sexual images and gender-dissident characters contrasted deeply with the hidden eroticism of the romantic period and with naturalism’s anatomical explanations of human desire. However, the treatment of sexual transgression and gender-bending practices in modernista and avant-garde productions operated much through condemnation rather than casting queerness as a valid expression of marginalized identities. Class, racial, gender, and sexual conflicts were instead thematized through the language of legal medicine to suggest that society needed to be defended against degeneration if the continent were to become modern and Latin American culture to achieve world status. Recent critical projects on representations of deviance in Latin American modernismo & avant-gardes have argued that the somatic fiction of sexual abnormality was the effect of a literary system that reproduced ideas about body normativity while identifying queerness and transness as unnameable experiences of embodiment, a monstrosity. While these investigations have mainly explored portrayals of dandyism, feminine men, and male homosexuality, much broader cultural frameworks contributed to both the stability and instability of gender and sexual protocols in Latin America’s modernization period (1880-1930). Scholars emphasized how queer men embodied alternative forms of femininity that weakened male sexual hegemony and the consequent reproduction of the binary of gender. Nonetheless, experts have nearly ignored how queer women, non-binary individuals, and trans* men, pejoratively called marimachos in the vernacular culture, contested homogeneous notions of masculinity inexorably tied to cisgender male bodies. Birth of the Marimacho argues that this historical gender expression emerged in the aesthetic experiments of modernista and avant-garde writers as a multi-faceted counter-cultural identity that disputed body binarism and late-nineteenth-century concepts of womanhood, decorum, femininity, and maternity as well as traditional notions of masculinity generating a long-lasting power struggle that reaches present days.
The objective of WP1 was to select the methodological and theoretical tools needed to write the essays and design a successful implementation plan. This project draws upon multiple theoretical schools and philosophical resources from gender and sexuality studies. Queer scholarship addresses not only the political self-representation of LGBTQ bodies. Queer studies also examine major problems in minority discourse: the medical stigmas around homosexuality and transness, the non-normative/non-reproductive uses of erotic pleasures, and the broad implications of ‘gender dysphoria’ for orthodox notions of citizenship. The following deliverables were listed in the fellowship application for WP1: 1) updated scholarly review of LGBTQ-related Modernist Latin American Literature. Under WP1, I produced a complete dataset where the entire project is outlined, listing more than two hundred primary sources consulted and an updated critical bibliography that evidence an ambitious digital and non-digital archival workplan involving European and Latin American archives.
The data set can be found here:
Halaburda, C. G., Schulze, P. W., & University of Cologne. (2024). Birth of the Marimacho: Modernismo's Trans* Cultural Productions in Latin America [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11384482(opens in new window)
WP 1 was fully achieved.
1.2.2 Work Package 2
WP II Data collection, fieldwork, and writing
The objectives of WP2 were to conduct archival work in different countries such as Germany, France, Mexico, Spain, and Argentina in national & university digital and non-digital libraries. This stage focused on the meticulous selection of archival sources during fieldwork to then write the first drafts of the project. The following archival institutions were consulted during the implementation of the plan:
Visited in person and consulted digitally:
The United Kingdom
• Manchester Central Library, Microfilm Collections on British Suffragism and World Feminist Networks. https://www.manchester.gov.uk/centrallibrary(opens in new window)
• Library Archive of the People’s History Museum of Manchester. https://phm.org.uk(opens in new window)
France
• Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship. The printed materials were consulted during a research visit in June 2024 https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en(opens in new window)
Germany
• National Socialism Documentation Center of Cologne. The Printed Materials of the Gender and Sexuality Collection of the NS DOK center were consulted in October 2023 and April 2024. https://museenkoeln.de/ns-dokumentationszentrum/default.aspx?s=315(opens in new window)
• Berlin Ibero-American Institute. The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship. The printed materials were consulted during a research visit in May 2024: https://www.iai.spk-berlin.de/startseite.html(opens in new window)
• Gay History Center of Cologne (Centrum Schwule Geschichte). https://www.csgkoeln.org/(opens in new window). Visited in April 2024. German Sexology and Gay Magazines.
• Schwules Museum of Berlin. https://www.schwulesmuseum.de/?lang=en(opens in new window). Consulted during a research trip in May 2024.
Consulted exclusively digitally:
Spain
Hemeroteca Nacional de España. The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship https://www.bne.es/es/catalogos/hemeroteca-digital(opens in new window)
Mexico
Hemeroteca Nacional de México. The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship. https://www.hndm.unam.mx/index.php/es/(opens in new window)
Argentina
Archivo Histórico de Revistas Argentinas (AHIRA). The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship. https://ahira.com.ar(opens in new window)
United States
The Internet Archive. The digital collections were consulted during the entire tenure of the fellowship https://archive.org/(opens in new window)
In the MSCA grant application, fieldwork and data collection were promised under WP2. Under WP2, however, the Fellow, in consultation with the supervisor, launched a multidimensional work plan that potentiated research, networking, and quality of the results. The list of documents produced as a result of this ambitious archival work is specified below and exceeds the stated expectations.
Under WPII, while collecting my sources and analyzing the material, I produced seven conference papers. One paper was published in Zenodo and available online in video format in collaboration with the University of Leeds’ Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. Based on the research conducted in this period of 10 months, and always in consultation with my supervisor to ensure quality and proper development of all the dimensions of this fellowship (research, dissemination, and training), I produced:
1) Seven conference papers; 2) two online conferences with guest speakers Dr. Facundo Abal from Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Argentina, and PhD candidate Jesse Rothbard, Northwestern University, United States; 3) a Third Mission public lecture; 4) a complete dataset where the entire project is outlined, listing more than two hundred primary sources that evidence an striving digital and non-digital archival workplan involving European and Latin American archives; 5) a complete career development plan; 5) a complete data management plan; and 6) an advanced seminar in Queer Latin American Literature that I taught at the Department of Romance Studies of the University of Cologne in the course of thirteen weeks, from October 2023 to February 2024. Details on all these achievements are provided below:
Publications:
Halaburda, C. G., Schulze, P. W., & University of Cologne. (2024). Birth of the Marimacho: Modernismo's Trans* Cultural Productions in Latin America [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11384482(opens in new window)
Recorded video conference:
University of Leeds, Simonetto, P., & Halaburda, C. G. (2023, November 16). A Sentimental Disability: Queer Melodrama, Gender Deviance, and Crip Bodies in 20th Century Argentine Theatre. A Sentimental Disability: Queer Melodrama, Gender Deviance, and Crip Bodies in 20th Century Argentine Theatre, University of Leeds. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11388057(opens in new window)
Teaching materials:
Halaburda, C. G. (2024, May 30). Programa de seminario avanzado. América Latina LGBTQ: escenas de la literatura, la ciencia y la cultura visual en contexto global (s XIX-XX-XXI). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11395388(opens in new window)
The conference papers outlined below were delivered at 1) The University of Leeds; 2) The University of Manchester; 3) the Global South Studies Center of the University of Cologne; 4) The University of Chicago; 5) The Modern Language Association Convention Philadelphia 2024; and 6) the Latin American Studies Association Convention, Bogotá 2024 (online). These conference papers presented advanced results and were key pathways to the final shaping of the articles outlined in the dataset with their final titles. Currently, two papers are in advanced stage for submission and three are outlined, exceeding the original expectations of the original plan.
Conferences as main speaker:
1. 15/11/2023. 10am. The University of Leeds, Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. A Sentimental Disability. See details and the lecture here: https://gender-studies.leeds.ac.uk/carlos-halaburdas-presentation-queer-crip-theory-workshop/(opens in new window)
2. 15/11/2023. 17hs. The University of Manchester. Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. A Cosmopolitan Uranism. See details here: https://events.manchester.ac.uk/event/event:k25x-lnxek6jr-adurag/carlos-halaburda-university-of-cologne-a-cosmopolitan-uranism-queer-networks-of-scandal-in-the-global-nineteenth-century(opens in new window)
3. 28/11/2023. 12hs. The University of Cologne. The Global South Studies Center. Paper The Garçonne Scandal. See details here: https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/veranstaltungen/gssc-seminar-reihe/gs-23-11-28-halaburda(opens in new window)
4. The Modern Language Association Convention 2024. Phil
adelphia, USA. from 4 to 7 January. Paper “Eugenics Scripted: Reading Disability in the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut Theatre Archive,” Carlos Gustavo Halaburda (U of Cologne). https://www.k-saa.org/blog/romanticism-and-related-panels-at-mla-24(opens in new window)
5. Presentation at the University of Chicago. Argentina’s Villainous Reproduction: Melodrama and the Making of Queerness and Disability in the Age of Eugenics. USA. 10/1/2024. https://voices.uchicago.edu/latinamericancarib/(opens in new window)
6. The Latin American Studies Association Congress, Bogotá, Colombia. June 12-
15. Online. Main Activities at LASA:
1. presented the paper Una lágrima para el atorrante: Capacitismo finisecular, sentimentalismo crip y el flâneur orillero in the Panel entitled Moda, alimentación, imagen: Estéticas higienistas del cuerpo finisecular - Parte 1'
2. participated in the Workshop entitled 'Drag Kings: Arqueología crítica de masculinidades espectaculares en Latinx América'
3. served as Session Organizer for the Workshop entitled 'Preconferencia de la sección Siglo XIX de LASA'
4. served as Session Organizer for the LASA Section Panel entitled 'Magic, Science, Spectacle: Exhibition and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Popular Venues'
5. served as Session Organizer for the Panel entitled 'Moda, alimentación, imagen: Estéticas higienistas del cuerpo finisecular - Parte 1'
6. served as Session Organizer for the Panel entitled 'Moda, alimentación, imagen: Estéticas higienistas del cuerpo finisecular - Parte 2'
7. served as Session Organizer for the LASA Intersection Panel entitled 'Los desafíos del archivo efímero en América Latina'
8. served as Chair for the LASA Section Panel entitled 'LGBTQ Fin de Siècle in Latin America'
9. served as Chair for the Roundtable entitled 'Crime Fiction from North to South: The Latin American Noir Revisited'
7) Marie Jahoda Center for International Gender Studies. Ruhr University Bochum. Fr, 21. Juni 2024, 12-14 Uhr, Uni 105 E/14 und Zoom: Prof. Dr. Carlos Halaburda (Universität zu Köln): Latin America’s Queer Anatomy in Belle Époque Paris: Paul Groussac, Gabriel Yturri, and Abject Glamour. https://mariejahodacenter.rub.de/veranstaltung/ag-maennlichkeiten-carlos-g-halaburda-latin-americas-queer-anatomy-in-belle-epoque-paris-paul-groussac-gabriel-yturri-and-abject-glamour/(opens in new window) POSTPONED for November 2024.
Conferences as Moderator and Organizer:
1. Un tornado alrededor. (A Tornado Surrounding Us). Conversation with Dr. Facundo Abal about his Argentine coming-of-age queer novel. 27/10/2023. Online.
2. The Woman Who Loved Horses: Gambling and Sapphic Pleasures in the Uruguayan Novecientos. 28/11/2023. Online. 4pm Cologne. Guest Lecture with Jesse Rothbard, PhD Candidate Northwestern University USA.
Third Mission Public Lecture:
1. Amor, Literatura y Diversidad con Carlos Halaburda. March 15, 2024. Miércoles 10 de Abril 2024 a las 20 h in MACHADO. https://spanischer-verein.com/?p=5957(opens in new window)
The aim of this Third Mission initiative at the Antonio Machado Center in Cologne was to share research findings with a wider audience, including the LGBTQ community, and to establish a platform where public feedback could shape my ongoing research project. The goal is to continue refining methods to share my research through museums, educational and cultural institutions, and various public media formats to present and advance current research in global queer studies. See Dissemination, Communication, and Exploitation plan for more details below.
Project deliverables:
Data Management Plan:
Schulze, P. W., Halaburda, C. G., & University of Cologne. (2024). Data Management Plan by Carlos G Halaburda, PhD (Horizon Europe 2022, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships, Grant Number 101103095). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11389869(opens in new window)
Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation Plan:
Halaburda, C. G., University of Cologne, & Schulze, P. W. (2024). Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation Plan by Carlos G Halaburda, PhD (Horizon Europe 2022, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships, Grant Number 101103095). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12174403(opens in new window)
Career Development Plan:
Halaburda, C. G., Schulze, P. W., & University of Cologne. (2024). Career Development Plan by Carlos G Halaburda, PhD (Horizon Europe 2022, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships, Grant Number 101103095). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11390426(opens in new window)
1.2.3 Work Package 3
WP III Analysis of the material and writing
The objective of WP3 was to develop and apply different tools and resources of queer and trans* theory to analyze the collected documents and establish the epistemological conditions in which the construction of the marimacho took place at the turn of the century (19th-20th centuries). The emphasis was to trace how the experimental connections between literature, sexology, and visual culture led to the emergence of this popular counter-cultural figure. The deliverable promised in the MSCA application was to deliver a book outline of the multiple constructions of the marimacho, which was fully achieved as evidenced by the publication of the dataset. See Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11384482(opens in new window)
In addition, two articles were drafted by month 10: 1) Buenos Aires’ Machona Affair:
French Queerness and the Reception of Victor Margueritte’s La Garçonne in 1920s Argentina; and 2) A Cosmopolitan Scandal: Homosexuality’s Sensorial Transgressions in Global Nineteenth Century Forensic Literature. I was able to exceed expectations by conducting a thorough book outline while advancing in individual articles written in English that will be reorganized, updated, and published in Spanish in a collected essay book, possibly by an Argentine press (Universidad Nacional de la Plata) in order to extend my reach farther across Europe and the Americas. For more details, see the DCE plan for further details.Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12174403(opens in new window)
1.2.4 Work Package 4
WP IV Specific training skills
The objective of WP 4 was to improve aptitudes in research and education and advance the fellow’s network with European scholars in the Humanities. During my 10-month residence at the University of Cologne, I strengthened my training by partaking in specific actions. In the proposal, I promised to audit a course offered by the Department of Romance Studies to gain pedagogical experience and develop new teaching skills. This activity was fully achieved. I also promised to participate in other departmental activities to gain experience in service and administration, another initiative fully attained. In addition, I taught an advanced seminar on Queer Latin American Literature in the Romance Studies Department, which provided me with international (European) experience in graduate teaching.
This work package was particularly successful as the completion of major training skill activities by month 10 generated valuable experience. By observing my supervisor’s teaching and by teaching my own course, the intention of WP 4 was also to conduct a transfer of knowledge to my host institution. During the tenure of my fellowship, besides teaching, I completed training workshops in the European academic job market, grant management, and collaboration research and multi-party grants. In addition, I attended numerous conferences and symposia, whose details are provided below.
I shall stress that training and knowledge transfer took place both ways. Just as I received training from the Dept. 43, Human Resources Development for Researchers at the University of Cologne, I also provided leadership skills to the profession by serving as the Chair of the Nineteenth Century Section of the Latin American Studies Association. Having a Marie Skłodowska Curie research fellowship at UniKöln allowed me to benefit from a vast array of learning experiences and professional opportunities. I summarize below these initiatives that advanced my academic training.
I report: 1) Training workshops completed; 2) Leadership in publishing; 3) Leadership in academic networking; 4) Leadership in mentoring and supervision; 5) Training conferences completed; and 6) certifications obtained.
Training workshops completed (5):
1. The Welcome Center. Getting to Know Germany Workshop. 10.04.2024. 16hs-18hs. Lecture about cultural diversity in Germany. Judith Berns.
2. Universität zu Köln, Der Kanzler. Dezernat 4 Personal. Personalentwicklung Wissenschaft. How to Become a Professor in Germany Online Workshop. 17.04.2024. 9hs-14:30hs. Job Documents, Job Interview, Negotiations. https://fortbildung.uni-koeln.de/veranstaltungsangebot/index_ger.html(opens in new window)
3. Universität zu Köln Global South Studies Center Workshop. Inclusion and Symmetrical Participation in Knowledge Production. The workshop is organised by the Co-Producing Knowledge (Thematic Group) of the GSSC, Cologne. 24.04.2024—25.04.2024. 14-18hs. https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/veranstaltungen/workshops/ws-24-04-24inclusion-and-symmetrical-participation-in-knowledge-production#c163523(opens in new window)
The workshop, "lnclusion and Symmetrical Participation in Knowledge Production," laid the groundwork for establishing an orientation and priorities for the GSSC thematic group "Co-producing Knowledge". The objective is to initiate dialogue and foster conversation on perspectives and practices that promote inclusion and symmetry among all actors involved in research processes, including but not restricted to researchers, co-researchers, collaborators, and other research participants (including non-human actors) who are part of the co-production of knowledge. Additionally, this workshop served to identify specific topics, sites, and ideas on which to focus on the future, as well as relevant analytic frameworks to guide conversations. The discussions at the workshop focused on key questions, such as how to integrate and enhance inclusive methodological and conceptual frameworks in research, from design to publication, address practical and epistemological concerns important to research subjects, and find ways to strengthen an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to joint knowledge production.
4. Human Resources Development Continuous Development Programme, University of Cologne. Professor wanted! Planning and optimising your academic career (Online). Staff in Research. 2-day event. Tuesday, May 28, 2024, 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM, Virtueller Raum 7. Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM, Virtueller Raum 7.
Contents:
Peer learning as well as individual coaching sessions
Requirements for a long-term career in academia
Analysis of the individual current situation
Reviewing the current academic profile
Development and specification of the next goals and planning of the next steps
5. Human Resources Development Continuous Development Programme, University of Cologne. Project Management (Online) Staff in Research. Tuesday, June 4, 2024, 09:00 AM - 04:30 PM, Virtueller Raum 3.
Contents:
Traditional vs. Agile project management: opportunities and limits
Particular challenges of project management in scientific organizations
Principles of project planning and controlling
Project leadership: roles, responsibilities, skills
Toolbox: project management techniques and methods
Leadership in publishing:
During the implementation of the action, I was appointed and fulfilled the role of peer reviewer for two leading academic journals in my field:
• Feminist Studies. University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland (2023-Present)
• Modern Language Review, Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) (2023-Present)
I also serve as an expert advisor in the following journals:
Hispanic Review, University of Pennsylvania, United States
Revista Iberoamericana. University of Pittsburgh, United States
Hispania, John Hopkins University, United States
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, Syracuse University, United States
Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana. Arizona State University, United States
Revista Letras. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru
Revista Desde el Sur. Universidad Científica del Sur, Lima, Peru
Revista ZUR. Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco, Chile
Leadership in academic networking:
Leadership opportunities in academic networking that arose from this MSCA fellowship include:
2023-2025 Chair of the LASA Nineteenth Century Section. https://sections.lasaweb.org/sections/nineteenthcentury/?pg=5(opens in new window)
2023-2024 Visiting Fellow with the University of Cologne Global South Studies Center. See details here: https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/personen/gastwissenschaftlerinnen/halaburda-carlos(opens in new window)
2023-2024 Affiliation to the Erich Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies. Associate fellow (University of Cologne). See details here: https://auerbach-institut.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/en/fellows-and-hosts/associated-fellows-and-hosts/carlos-halaburda-peter-w-schulze(opens in new window)
2023-2024 Affiliation to the Portuguese Brazilian Institute (University of Cologne)
2023-2024 Affiliation to the Department of Romance Studies (University of Cologne)
Leadership in mentoring and supervision
I provided leadership in grant writing and academic job market documents, assisting three PhD students in the United States (Northwestern University) and colleagues in Canada in obtaining postdoctoral funding, for example, from The University of Toronto’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
In my course AMÉRICA LATINA LGBTQ at the University of Cologne, I taught and supervised advanced papers written by my Master's students at the UniKoln’s Teaching Program. The students’ final papers examined issues such as Anti-LGBTQ violence in the context of human rights violations in 20th century Latin America, homosexuality and the Cuban revolution, LGBTQ prison writing, and medical representations of queerness.
This MSCA fellowship aims to expand career opportunities, and it has certainly succeeded in this mission. I was appointed Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago as of July 2024, a pioneer institution in queer theory, gender and sexuality and Latin American studies. I am bringing the expertise developed and refined during my tenure as an MSCA Fellow and I am certain that this experience will contribute to a successful career in the future.
Training conferences completed (22):
Attending conferences and seminars led by colleagues in other disciplines was vital for my MSCA postdoctoral experience in Europe. It fostered interdisciplinary collaboration as these academic gatherings provided opportunities to explore how gender and sexuality intersect with diverse fields such as art history, comparative literature, and ecocriticism. Engaging with varied perspectives enhanced my ability to analyze my history of queer women in broader cultural, social, and environmental contexts. For instance, learning about issues of gender from the perspective of environmental studies allowed me to see the ways gendered experiences intersect with ecological issues, as evidenced in a series of talks at the Global South Studies Center of UniKoln. Attending events leads to innovative research projects and publications that push the boundaries of traditional gender and sexuality studies and that is why I invested the time in interacting with experts in fields such as ethnomusicology and African studies, for example, which can uncover the intersections of gender, race, and historical trauma, providing a deeper understanding of historical and contemporary social issues. As a result of this intensive involvement in events organized by colleagues, I participated in a concert at the Spanish cultural center of Cologne, Antonio Machado Center, with ethnomusicologist Luis Gimenez, singing Spanish songs about diaspora and migration. With Luis, I am planning a record an album with songs related to the marimacho in Spanish and Argentine culture. This album will
be recorded possibly in Chicago in the s
Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)
In what follows, I outline the outcomes accomplished so far and the strategies for further development of goals established in the original proposal as well as new ones that emerged during the implementation of the 10 months of implementation of the action. A critical objective of this project is to create a positive impact across different fields of the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and Gender and Sexuality Diversity Education, including academic and non-academic audiences. I describe how the realization of significant results allowed me to continue with the next phases of the project that will be carried out until finalizing all milestones promised in the original proposal. Each milestone reached so far is verifiable by Internet links and digital object identifiers (DOIs) found in Zenodo, the general-purpose open repository developed under the European OpenAIRE program.
As stated before, this project is a cultural history of a Hispanic cultural construction, the marimacho, the name given to women who pushed gender, sexual, and socio-political boundaries. In this sense, this project is committed to a transformative scholarly framework that validates the cultural memory of stigmatized Latin American and European gender and sexual minorities, especially European queer migrants to South America. It seeks to recognize and give visibility to the epistemic, cultural, and institutional violence historically endured by the LGBTQ community. This project addresses the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century legacies of homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny recorded in the literary and scientific archives of the region, with a global perspective. In my combination of literary criticism, historical work, archival research, and the critique of past sexual and medical taxonomies, I read against the grain of the original violence that represented LGBTQ peoples as abject subjects unworthy of full citizenship in the cultural production of the period 1880-1930. My research is an opportunity to challenge official narratives about gender and sexual minorities. A principal goal of my research is to expand the cultural history of queer Latino collectives. The attention to queer cultural memory will acknowledge the historical stigmatization of LGBTQ populations persecuted by state power and endured confinement in prisons and mental hospitals in the early twentieth century. Ultimately, this is a research project that seeks historical restitution for past Latin American and European LGBTQ collectives.
Results achieved:
WP I Review / Bibliography of Modernist Latin American LGBTQ Literature & Culture. Completed
WP II Data collection, fieldwork, and writing. Completed
WP III Analysis of the material and writing. Partially completed. To be completed in the next phase. Details are provided below. The Work Package was partially completed because the project was terminated in month 10 to begin a career as Tenure Track Professor of Romance Languages at The University of Chicago.
WP IV Specific training skills. Completed and exceeded expectations from the original proposal.
WP V Dissemination and communication. Partially completed. To be completed in the next phase. Details are provided below. The Work Package was partially completed because the project was terminated in month 10 to begin a career as Tenure Track Professor of Romance Languages at The University of Chicago.
A summary of the research results is provided in the following chapter outline carried out during the implementation of WP 1, 2, and 3.
Article I
The Marimacho Wars:
The New Woman and the Twilight of Gender Normativity in the Hispanic Press
Summary. On January 19, 1895, the Mexican Catholic newspaper El Tiempo published an editorial titled "War against the Marimacho" authored by Marrasquino. In this piece, concern was raised regarding the perceived detrimental impact of novel French customs on Mexican women. Paris was depicted as a breeding ground for radical gender transformations that might "contaminate" Mexico with foreign notions of women's liberation from domestic confines. The emergence of the New Woman, characterized by innovative worldly manners, threatened traditional gender hierarchies, prompting editorialists in Mexico to rally against a potential feminist disturbance fueled by foreign ideas. This critical stance against the New Woman was a recurring theme in Spain too. Various editorials criticized women who adopted masculine attire, delved into literary themes historically dominated by men, or advocated for suffrage. Such women were derogatorily labeled as "marimachos," deemed aberrations of nature. This essay draws from monster theory (Halberstam, 1995; Antebi, 2009; Moraña, 2017) to scrutinize a broad range of newspaper articles penned by Latin American and Iberian authors in newspapers from Mexico, Argentina, and Spain, including notable modernists such as José Enrique Rodó ("Feminisms," 1909), Miguel de Unamuno ("More about pants," 1902), Rubén Darío ("Those Women," 1912), and Jorge Luis Borges ("Women Are Guilty of the Marriage Crisis," 1932). The analysis explores reactions to cosmopolitan feminist movements, particularly influenced by French and British sources, and also examines a series of opinion pieces in publications such as La Patria de Mexico and El Heraldo de Madrid to show how evolving gender identities complicated conventional understandings of Mexican and Spanish womanhood in the turn of the century ("War against the Marimacho," 1895; "The Woman of the Future," 1898).
Note. The sources collected for this article address numerous issues such as: 1) the influence of French writer George Sand in the history of gender androgyny; 2) the legacy of writer Emilia Pardo Bazán and her “masculine” literary topics; 3) the fat shaming and masculinization of the British suffragettes; and 4) Parisian queer fashion and the emergence of a Hispanic queer female culture in the fin de siècle.
Article II
Buenos Aires’ Machona Affair:
French Queerness and the Reception of Victor Margueritte’s La Garçonne in 1920s Argentina
Summary. La Garçonne (1922) by the French writer Victor Margueritte provoked international scandal during the Interwar period (1918-1939) as the novel portrayed a queer romance between two women of the Parisian bourgeoisie. The turn-of-the-century Naturalist novel à la Émile Zola associated female homosexuality with plebeian groups and sex work. Erotic relationships between high-society women had rarely been a novelistic topic in the fin de siècle for which Margueritte endured repudiation from French literary circles. In the Southern Cone, with the Spanish translation and extraordinary success of La Garçonne [La machona], queer forms of masculine embodiment and same-sex desire became thematic trends in numerous literary, musical, and visual works. This essay examines how tango songs, plays, novels, illustrations, and magazine articles addressed the garçonne scandal, generating a crucial debate about the stability and instability of conventional gender and sexual protocols in 1920s Buenos Aires. By engaging with a series of texts by Horacio Quiroga, Abraham Valdelomar, Isaac Morales, Luis Cané, and Osvaldo Sosa Cordero, I explore how la machona became a counter-cultural identity that disputed gender binarism and early-twentieth-century notions of womanhood, decorum, femininity, and masculinity, turning into an essential chapter in South American queer history.
Note. The sources collected for this article address numerous issues such as: 1) the censorship endured by Margueritte in France; 2) the long-standing police investigation (Scotland Yard) against Margueritte for indecent content; 3) the censorship in Latin America, especially Brazil; 4) the extraordinary success of the novel in Buenos Aires and the multiple translations, adaptations, and musical performances (tango) dedicated to Monique Lerbier, the main character; and 5) the repudiation against French authorities voiced by Argentine, Peruvian, and Uruguayan writers due to Margueritte’s loss of his Legion of Honor. The article seeks to show the ambivalent responses in the world literary landscape of the 1920s toward queer sexualities.
Article III
A Cosmopolitan Scandal:
Homosexuality’s Sensorial Transgressions in Global Nineteenth-Century Forensic Literature
Summary. In the late 1880s, Félix Carlier, chief police of the Parisian anti-vice squad, contended in his book Les deux prostitutions [The Two Prostitutions] (1887) that “pederasty” should be classified as a criminal offense in France. In parallel with emerging European works on the perils of same-sex desire for national security, such as Johann Ludwig Casper’s Practisches Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medicin [Handbook of Forensic Medicine] (1856) and Auguste Ambroise Tardieu’s Étude médico-légale sur les attentats aux moeurs (1857) [Medico-Legal Handbook on Assaults Against Decency], Carlier expressed his condemnation against female sex work and “anti-physical” forms of male prostitution, thereby introducing another categorization amidst the numerous clinical terms employed to categorize queer populations during the nineteenth century, including pederasty (Casper, 1852; Tardieu, 1857), Urnings [uranism] (Ulrichs, 1864), conträre Geschlechtsempfindung [contrary sexual feeling] (Westphal, 1869), and “homosexuality” (Kertbeny, 1869). Revealing the secret codes of Parisian sex and gender insubordinations, Carlier maintained that it was imperative to “fight against the infamous vice of pederasty, which inspires only disgust.” Pederasty amounted to a “great scandal,” an “erotic madness” that threatened French morals. Carlier’s Les deux prostitutions and Casper’s Handbuch rapidly became global references about the sensorial transgressions of homosexuality. Extensive passages from these books appeared in books such as Luis M. Aguirre’s La lujuria humana (Spain, 1903), Francisco Viveiro de Castros’ Atentados ao pudor (Brazil, 1895), and La pederastia en Cuba (1890) by Luis Montané-Dardé. In addition, mentions to the “disgusting” traits of cosmopolitan homosexuality were at the core of Latin American travel writings about erotic dissidence in international enclaves like Paris and Buenos Aires, such as Paul Groussac’s Vistas parisienses (1883). Via the lens of this European-Latin American circuit of knowledge exchange, this article discusses how homosexuality’s cosmopolitan outlook was interpreted as a symbol of decadent internationalism. Homosexuality challenged national mythologies of collective belonging by unsettling the components that linked regional markers of identification: gender and sex normativity, language, patriotic devotion, and hetero-familial bonds. Practisches Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medicin, Les deux prostitutions and its subsequent translations would call for stricter measures to cleanse society from non-hegemonic erotic practices associated with profanity, scandal, and contamination.
Note. Reading these transnational circuits of scientific homophobia allows a comparative approach to a series of scientific and literary renditions of homosexual scandals in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires, offering new perspectives on the affiliations between global forensic science and the belles-lettres. By affording due significance to scandal as a dual technology of forensic writing and queer subjectivation, this article assesses two conflicting narratives of the cosmopolitan nature of nineteenth-century queerness. From above, it examines how, by instrumentalizing disgust, the medical stigmatization of homosexuality was crucial for creating an emotional semiology of homosexuality’s sensorial transgressions. This forensic study of the signs of homosexuality was designed as a method of observation of gestures, makeup, hairstyle, smell, clothing, and spatial location. Forensic sexology produced a sensorial method that incorporated kinetic, visual, and olfactory traits for the control of “irregular” bodies. From below, this article unveils a modest homosexual micropolitics marked by a detachment from national, aesthetic, and hetero-normative imaginaries. In this juncture between alienation and resistance, I contend that, through scandal, global gender-sex transgressors advanced innovative models of subjectivation in a context of silence and persecution. These models of subjectivation, although usually practiced in secret and confined to closeted communities, were rooted in two foundational principles, each bearing their unique vernacular imprint. Firstly, there was a focus on experimental bodily aesthetics, which in turn gave shape to medical discourses of inversion and androgyny but also created an internationalist visual code for homosexual recognition and seduction. Secondly, there was an emphasis on the cultivation of erotic practices in marginalized spaces where there was an ongoing reconfiguration of boundaries related to nation, class, gender, and race. To this spatial reconfiguration doctors, pedagogues, writers, and journalists responded through a mixture of fascination, curiosity, and disgust, fundamental properties in the fabrication of the cosmopolitan-freemasonry-of-vice narrative and the global call to eradicate it.
Article IV
A Marimacho Underworld:
Tramps, Prostitutes, and Malevas in Buenos Aires Print Culture, 1890-1930
Summary. This article explores how the medical criteria of Argentine positivist science and literary naturalism promoted a heteronormative and ableist view towards the so-called “transient” female body. The tramps (las atorrantes) and their multiple vernacular affiliations (linyeras, cirujas, and lunfardos, percantas y malevas) were integrated into the scientific culture of the turn of the century as the grotesque contrast to those evolutionary patterns of human perfection. Within this criminal taxonomy, women who engaged in sex work, begging, and petty theft were called malevas (butch), and percantas (prostitutes), their gender questioned and their capacity to integrate into Argentine citizenship denied. However, the popular culture of tango, theatre (sainetes) and the feuilleton of the first third of the twentieth century proposed an alternative image that, although it did not dissolve it, at least complicated the positivist antinomy queer/normative—healthy/unhealthy—able/disabled. Where positivism and naturalism sought social regeneration through logics of eugenic selection or seclusion (imprisonment,or asylum life), the nexus tango-theater- feuilleton explored the manifestation of sex-gender deviance, physical and cognitive impairment through a tragicomic and vulgar sentimentalism. This aesthetic formula became a pedagogical strategy that combined kitsch with anthropological renditions of the underworlds of Buenos Aires to suggest that the moral and physical recovery of the tramp was necessary and desirable in the making of the ideal Argentine woman. Focusing on this popular character of the Río de la Plata and based on a critique informed by crip and queer theory, this article examines how the aesthetic analysis of difference offers new methodologies to approach the notion of queerness and disability and the primary role they had in the context of literary modernization and the birth of modern ideas of citizenship, labor, and (re) productive capacity. Texts considered are “Mujer que vivió como un atorrante.” (1915), “El atorrante de por acá” (1894, chronicle) by Rubén Darío, “El atorrante” (1910, tango) by Luis Galván, El romance de un atorrante (1921, novel) by José Antonio Saldías, Ramera by Leonidas Barletta (1923, novel) and El linyera ( 1929, theater) by Ivo Pelay, among many others.
Article V
Buenos Aires’ Androgynous Panther:
Josephine Baker and the Spectacle of Racialized Queerness
Summary.
This article explores the multiple racial narratives that emerged in the 1920s Argentine cultural press around the jazz legend Josephine Baker (1906-1975). Numerous newspapers (Mundo Argentino, Caras y Caretas, Crítica, and Ahora, among others) and a novel (Luxuria: The Nocturnal Life of Buenos Aires, Cione, 1936) constructed Baker as an ungendered body through the tropes of primitivism, androgyny, orientalism, and sexual inversion. The chapter examines how Baker’s dance performances in her Argentine tour of 1929 generated new discourses on female racialized queerness in the Southern Cone and what are the implications for the history of blackness in regions other than the United States and the Caribbean. By reading this corpus of articles, this essay seeks to demonstrate how the emphasis on the extravagant, the camp, and the primitive of the performances defined the editorials’ tone regarding the presentations of the Revue Nègre at the Astral Theater in Buenos Aires. The paper argues that the racialized eroticization of Josephine Baker in the press is a constitutive part of what I will call a peripheral orientalism: Baker becomes the screen where critics projected their colonial desire for black female bodies, a systemic racism attached to a system of stratification of sex and gender shaped by visions of the Orient. Baker's queer and contortionist body would be reduced to a visual prosthesis of erotic stimulation for male readers, who, through its consumption reinforced a desire for racial and sexual supremacy that has not been investigated in depth in Río de la Plata Critical Race Studies.
Identification of key needs to ensure further uptake and success:
Short-term—1-2 years
Since the raw data was processed, the notes were taken, the drafts organized in outlines, the initial feedback by colleagues was received in the different conferences given, and the bibliography was consulted, the key needs to ensure sucess are:
1) Academic Publication: Publish the research findings in reputable Open Access peer-reviewed journals specializing in Latin American history, comparative literature, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies to ensure academic rigor and recognition.
(1) A monograph to be submitted possibly to the National University of La Plata Press. Originally, in my proposal, I proposed the University of Toronto Press. But since this press is not open access, I would consider the prestigious open access press Universidad Nacional de La Plata, one of the most important and recognized open repositories in the world: https://www.editorial.unlp.edu.ar/genero(opens in new window). This monograph is a long-term project that will extend the period of the tenure of my MSCA fellowship.
(2) Three singled- authored articles to be submitted to the open access journals possibly a) Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Latin American Research Review and Journal of Homosexuality b) Others considered: Anclajes (Universidad de La Pampa, Argentina) and Genre, Sexualité & Société (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, France). These articles will analyze the following topics: (a) the medicalized depiction of male queerness, trans*masculine expression and transvestism in literature; (b) the types of transgender affirmation that novelists, doctors, and playwrights condemned as ‘sexual inversion’ and crimes ‘against morality’; and (c) the role of disciplines such as endocrinology, psychiatry, legal medicine, and criminology in the making of the marimacho, a ‘monster gender’, a somatic construction that helped to solidify the cishetero scientific notion of ‘gender dysphoria.’
Conference Presentations: Present the research at international and regional conferences related to Latin American studies, gender studies, and history to engage with colleagues and receive feedback. In 2025, I will attend the LASA San Francisco Conference. https://lasaweb.org/en/lasa2024/upcoming-congresses/(opens in new window). Other conferences are being considered, such as the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, which will be held virtually, May 29 - June 1, 2025. https://www.acla.org/annual-meeting(opens in new window).
Collaboration with Cultural Institutions: Partner with cultural centers to organize exhibitions, lectures, and discussions that highlight the research findings and their contemporary relevance. The first institution to contact will be the Chicago Center Halsted to plan a lecture series as part of my third mission commitment. https://www.centeronhalsted.org(opens in new window).
Educational Materials: Create and distribute educational materials, such as lesson plans, multimedia presentations, and articles, for use in university courses to integrate my research into curricula. To be shared in Zenodo. See here first result: Halaburda, C. G. (2024, May 30). Programa de seminario avanzado. América Latina LGBTQ: escenas de la literatura, la ciencia y la cultura visual en contexto global (s XIX-XX-XXI). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11395388(opens in new window).
Long term—1-4 years
Digital Presence: Establish a dedicated website to share research updates, summaries of findings, and downloadable resources, making the research accessible to a broader audience. This website will be a collaborative enterprise among colleagues from Europe, the United States, and Latin America. But especially will be a platform where my students will contribute with blog entries, translations of 19th century queer materials (copyright free), and digital illustrations. The objective is to create a website with multiple kinds of engagements. A preliminary plan is deployed in the annex of this document.
Media Engagement: Write op-eds, participate in interviews, and collaborate with journalists to disseminate the research through newspapers, magazines, and online media platforms, reaching a wider audience. A preliminary plan is deployed in the annex of this document.
Community Engagement: Work with LGBTQ+ and women's rights organizations in Latin America to share findings and support advocacy efforts, ensuring the research has a direct impact on ongoing social justice movements. I have experience carrying out these initiatives. I gave lectures in the past with the Centro Ayelén in Tucumán, Argentina in 2022.
Public Outreach: Develop public lectures and workshops aimed at educating the general public and non-academic audiences about the findings to increase awareness of the historical roots of homophobia and misogyny in the context of the Global South. I began this initiative in Cologne in the Center Machado during the implementation of my project. I gave a public lecture on 10/04/2024. Find information here: http://spanischer-verein.com/?p=5957(opens in new window)
My long-term plan for exploitation includes mainly to adapt my academic research on the history of queerness in Latin America to digital humanities initiatives so I can make it more accessible, engaging, and interactive for multiple publics. This initiative will also be open access and will be available in Zenodo. Across different mediums and with the help and collaboration of students and experts of the Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) of the University of Chicago (https://digitalhumanities.uchicago.edu/project/center-for-digital-scholarship/(opens in new window)) I would like to pursue the following ideas that will give shape to the bigger project, the website The Queer Ancestries Digital Humanities Project.
Interactive Maps
1. Historical Timelines and Geolocations: Create interactive maps showing significant events, places, and figures in the history of homosexuality in Latin America and Europe. Some examples are the Ball of 41 in Mexico (1901), the visit of Josephine Baker to Buenos Aires (1929), and the publication of La Garçonne [La Marimacho] (1922) by Victor Margueritte in Buenos Aires and Latin America. Each location can have pop-up information, images, and links to primary sources or further readings. These geolocations will also be connected with my data set so scholars and the general public can access the reference data with relevant information on these historical and cultural events.
2. Migration and Cultural Exchange: Map out the migration patterns of LGBTQ+ individuals and communities, highlighting how cultural exchanges influenced LGBTQ+ identities and movements in the 19th century. Examples in my research are the Spanish travesties that migrated from Madrid to Buenos Aires in the late 1800s. I would engage students to contribute in this section of the website.
Infographics
1. Historical Timelines: Design infographics that visually represent key events, legal changes, and societal shifts regarding homosexuality in Latin America. These infographics will be available in Zenodo.
2. Cultural Impact: Develop infographics showing the influence of LGBTQ+ individuals and movements on Latin American and European culture, politics, and art. These infographics would have minimal information but would be visually impactful with QR codes leading to my data set for scholars and the public to find out more about the project.
Story Maps
1. Personal Stories: Use platforms like Esri Story Maps to combine maps, text, images, and videos to tell personal stories of LGBTQ+ individuals throughout history. These Story Maps would feature stories of queer women or queer characters related to my research and educational materials. I would consider founding a network of students and colleagues to contribute to this initiative. The StoryMap would feature a 3-5 minute video featuring a queer novel, a queer theatre play, or a song related to Trans Modernismo and would include a bibliography and a link to queer archives, such as the Schwule Museum Library of Berlin or the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institute of Berlin for the audience to keep the engagement.
Web Series in YouTube Channel and Available in Zenodo.
1. Educational Web Series: Develop a web series aimed at educating a broader audience about the history and struggles of LGBTQ+ individuals in Latin America and Europe and also Queer Literature. 30-minutes lectures led by me with content related to Trans Modernismo.
By utilizing these digital humanities approaches, I will bring my research to a wider audience, foster greater understanding and engagement, and preserve important historical narratives for future generations. These objectives and initiatives will help ensure that the research not only contributes to academic knowledge but also has a meaningful impact on public understanding of queer history.
Note on the future of the project beyond termination: As indicated in the amendment, these initiatives will be developed under a new institutional affiliation as of July 1st, 2024. I will be a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies: Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago. However, as indicated in article 17 of the GA, I will attend to my obligations to keep the principles of open science and successfully implement the DCE plan
Note on Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation milestones.
In the very initial phase of the project, dissemination has focused on presenting at conferences, invited talks, and workshops as well as sharing data sets in the respective repository (Zenodo). Sharing the first results was aimed at raising awareness among scholars and the general public. Following the generation of more extensive research results in the years to come in the shape of publications and the other initiatives outlined above, communication, dissemination, and exploitation will keep focusing on the academic community and civil society
As stated before, this project is a cultural history of a Hispanic cultural construction, the marimacho, the name given to women who pushed gender, sexual, and socio-political boundaries. In this sense, this project is committed to a transformative scholarly framework that validates the cultural memory of stigmatized Latin American and European gender and sexual minorities, especially European queer migrants to South America. It seeks to recognize and give visibility to the epistemic, cultural, and institutional violence historically endured by the LGBTQ community. This project addresses the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century legacies of homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny recorded in the literary and scientific archives of the region, with a global perspective. In my combination of literary criticism, historical work, archival research, and the critique of past sexual and medical taxonomies, I read against the grain of the original violence that represented LGBTQ peoples as abject subjects unworthy of full citizenship in the cultural production of the period 1880-1930. My research is an opportunity to challenge official narratives about gender and sexual minorities. A principal goal of my research is to expand the cultural history of queer Latino collectives. The attention to queer cultural memory will acknowledge the historical stigmatization of LGBTQ populations persecuted by state power and endured confinement in prisons and mental hospitals in the early twentieth century. Ultimately, this is a research project that seeks historical restitution for past Latin American and European LGBTQ collectives.
Results achieved:
WP I Review / Bibliography of Modernist Latin American LGBTQ Literature & Culture. Completed
WP II Data collection, fieldwork, and writing. Completed
WP III Analysis of the material and writing. Partially completed. To be completed in the next phase. Details are provided below. The Work Package was partially completed because the project was terminated in month 10 to begin a career as Tenure Track Professor of Romance Languages at The University of Chicago.
WP IV Specific training skills. Completed and exceeded expectations from the original proposal.
WP V Dissemination and communication. Partially completed. To be completed in the next phase. Details are provided below. The Work Package was partially completed because the project was terminated in month 10 to begin a career as Tenure Track Professor of Romance Languages at The University of Chicago.
A summary of the research results is provided in the following chapter outline carried out during the implementation of WP 1, 2, and 3.
Article I
The Marimacho Wars:
The New Woman and the Twilight of Gender Normativity in the Hispanic Press
Summary. On January 19, 1895, the Mexican Catholic newspaper El Tiempo published an editorial titled "War against the Marimacho" authored by Marrasquino. In this piece, concern was raised regarding the perceived detrimental impact of novel French customs on Mexican women. Paris was depicted as a breeding ground for radical gender transformations that might "contaminate" Mexico with foreign notions of women's liberation from domestic confines. The emergence of the New Woman, characterized by innovative worldly manners, threatened traditional gender hierarchies, prompting editorialists in Mexico to rally against a potential feminist disturbance fueled by foreign ideas. This critical stance against the New Woman was a recurring theme in Spain too. Various editorials criticized women who adopted masculine attire, delved into literary themes historically dominated by men, or advocated for suffrage. Such women were derogatorily labeled as "marimachos," deemed aberrations of nature. This essay draws from monster theory (Halberstam, 1995; Antebi, 2009; Moraña, 2017) to scrutinize a broad range of newspaper articles penned by Latin American and Iberian authors in newspapers from Mexico, Argentina, and Spain, including notable modernists such as José Enrique Rodó ("Feminisms," 1909), Miguel de Unamuno ("More about pants," 1902), Rubén Darío ("Those Women," 1912), and Jorge Luis Borges ("Women Are Guilty of the Marriage Crisis," 1932). The analysis explores reactions to cosmopolitan feminist movements, particularly influenced by French and British sources, and also examines a series of opinion pieces in publications such as La Patria de Mexico and El Heraldo de Madrid to show how evolving gender identities complicated conventional understandings of Mexican and Spanish womanhood in the turn of the century ("War against the Marimacho," 1895; "The Woman of the Future," 1898).
Note. The sources collected for this article address numerous issues such as: 1) the influence of French writer George Sand in the history of gender androgyny; 2) the legacy of writer Emilia Pardo Bazán and her “masculine” literary topics; 3) the fat shaming and masculinization of the British suffragettes; and 4) Parisian queer fashion and the emergence of a Hispanic queer female culture in the fin de siècle.
Article II
Buenos Aires’ Machona Affair:
French Queerness and the Reception of Victor Margueritte’s La Garçonne in 1920s Argentina
Summary. La Garçonne (1922) by the French writer Victor Margueritte provoked international scandal during the Interwar period (1918-1939) as the novel portrayed a queer romance between two women of the Parisian bourgeoisie. The turn-of-the-century Naturalist novel à la Émile Zola associated female homosexuality with plebeian groups and sex work. Erotic relationships between high-society women had rarely been a novelistic topic in the fin de siècle for which Margueritte endured repudiation from French literary circles. In the Southern Cone, with the Spanish translation and extraordinary success of La Garçonne [La machona], queer forms of masculine embodiment and same-sex desire became thematic trends in numerous literary, musical, and visual works. This essay examines how tango songs, plays, novels, illustrations, and magazine articles addressed the garçonne scandal, generating a crucial debate about the stability and instability of conventional gender and sexual protocols in 1920s Buenos Aires. By engaging with a series of texts by Horacio Quiroga, Abraham Valdelomar, Isaac Morales, Luis Cané, and Osvaldo Sosa Cordero, I explore how la machona became a counter-cultural identity that disputed gender binarism and early-twentieth-century notions of womanhood, decorum, femininity, and masculinity, turning into an essential chapter in South American queer history.
Note. The sources collected for this article address numerous issues such as: 1) the censorship endured by Margueritte in France; 2) the long-standing police investigation (Scotland Yard) against Margueritte for indecent content; 3) the censorship in Latin America, especially Brazil; 4) the extraordinary success of the novel in Buenos Aires and the multiple translations, adaptations, and musical performances (tango) dedicated to Monique Lerbier, the main character; and 5) the repudiation against French authorities voiced by Argentine, Peruvian, and Uruguayan writers due to Margueritte’s loss of his Legion of Honor. The article seeks to show the ambivalent responses in the world literary landscape of the 1920s toward queer sexualities.
Article III
A Cosmopolitan Scandal:
Homosexuality’s Sensorial Transgressions in Global Nineteenth-Century Forensic Literature
Summary. In the late 1880s, Félix Carlier, chief police of the Parisian anti-vice squad, contended in his book Les deux prostitutions [The Two Prostitutions] (1887) that “pederasty” should be classified as a criminal offense in France. In parallel with emerging European works on the perils of same-sex desire for national security, such as Johann Ludwig Casper’s Practisches Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medicin [Handbook of Forensic Medicine] (1856) and Auguste Ambroise Tardieu’s Étude médico-légale sur les attentats aux moeurs (1857) [Medico-Legal Handbook on Assaults Against Decency], Carlier expressed his condemnation against female sex work and “anti-physical” forms of male prostitution, thereby introducing another categorization amidst the numerous clinical terms employed to categorize queer populations during the nineteenth century, including pederasty (Casper, 1852; Tardieu, 1857), Urnings [uranism] (Ulrichs, 1864), conträre Geschlechtsempfindung [contrary sexual feeling] (Westphal, 1869), and “homosexuality” (Kertbeny, 1869). Revealing the secret codes of Parisian sex and gender insubordinations, Carlier maintained that it was imperative to “fight against the infamous vice of pederasty, which inspires only disgust.” Pederasty amounted to a “great scandal,” an “erotic madness” that threatened French morals. Carlier’s Les deux prostitutions and Casper’s Handbuch rapidly became global references about the sensorial transgressions of homosexuality. Extensive passages from these books appeared in books such as Luis M. Aguirre’s La lujuria humana (Spain, 1903), Francisco Viveiro de Castros’ Atentados ao pudor (Brazil, 1895), and La pederastia en Cuba (1890) by Luis Montané-Dardé. In addition, mentions to the “disgusting” traits of cosmopolitan homosexuality were at the core of Latin American travel writings about erotic dissidence in international enclaves like Paris and Buenos Aires, such as Paul Groussac’s Vistas parisienses (1883). Via the lens of this European-Latin American circuit of knowledge exchange, this article discusses how homosexuality’s cosmopolitan outlook was interpreted as a symbol of decadent internationalism. Homosexuality challenged national mythologies of collective belonging by unsettling the components that linked regional markers of identification: gender and sex normativity, language, patriotic devotion, and hetero-familial bonds. Practisches Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medicin, Les deux prostitutions and its subsequent translations would call for stricter measures to cleanse society from non-hegemonic erotic practices associated with profanity, scandal, and contamination.
Note. Reading these transnational circuits of scientific homophobia allows a comparative approach to a series of scientific and literary renditions of homosexual scandals in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires, offering new perspectives on the affiliations between global forensic science and the belles-lettres. By affording due significance to scandal as a dual technology of forensic writing and queer subjectivation, this article assesses two conflicting narratives of the cosmopolitan nature of nineteenth-century queerness. From above, it examines how, by instrumentalizing disgust, the medical stigmatization of homosexuality was crucial for creating an emotional semiology of homosexuality’s sensorial transgressions. This forensic study of the signs of homosexuality was designed as a method of observation of gestures, makeup, hairstyle, smell, clothing, and spatial location. Forensic sexology produced a sensorial method that incorporated kinetic, visual, and olfactory traits for the control of “irregular” bodies. From below, this article unveils a modest homosexual micropolitics marked by a detachment from national, aesthetic, and hetero-normative imaginaries. In this juncture between alienation and resistance, I contend that, through scandal, global gender-sex transgressors advanced innovative models of subjectivation in a context of silence and persecution. These models of subjectivation, although usually practiced in secret and confined to closeted communities, were rooted in two foundational principles, each bearing their unique vernacular imprint. Firstly, there was a focus on experimental bodily aesthetics, which in turn gave shape to medical discourses of inversion and androgyny but also created an internationalist visual code for homosexual recognition and seduction. Secondly, there was an emphasis on the cultivation of erotic practices in marginalized spaces where there was an ongoing reconfiguration of boundaries related to nation, class, gender, and race. To this spatial reconfiguration doctors, pedagogues, writers, and journalists responded through a mixture of fascination, curiosity, and disgust, fundamental properties in the fabrication of the cosmopolitan-freemasonry-of-vice narrative and the global call to eradicate it.
Article IV
A Marimacho Underworld:
Tramps, Prostitutes, and Malevas in Buenos Aires Print Culture, 1890-1930
Summary. This article explores how the medical criteria of Argentine positivist science and literary naturalism promoted a heteronormative and ableist view towards the so-called “transient” female body. The tramps (las atorrantes) and their multiple vernacular affiliations (linyeras, cirujas, and lunfardos, percantas y malevas) were integrated into the scientific culture of the turn of the century as the grotesque contrast to those evolutionary patterns of human perfection. Within this criminal taxonomy, women who engaged in sex work, begging, and petty theft were called malevas (butch), and percantas (prostitutes), their gender questioned and their capacity to integrate into Argentine citizenship denied. However, the popular culture of tango, theatre (sainetes) and the feuilleton of the first third of the twentieth century proposed an alternative image that, although it did not dissolve it, at least complicated the positivist antinomy queer/normative—healthy/unhealthy—able/disabled. Where positivism and naturalism sought social regeneration through logics of eugenic selection or seclusion (imprisonment,or asylum life), the nexus tango-theater- feuilleton explored the manifestation of sex-gender deviance, physical and cognitive impairment through a tragicomic and vulgar sentimentalism. This aesthetic formula became a pedagogical strategy that combined kitsch with anthropological renditions of the underworlds of Buenos Aires to suggest that the moral and physical recovery of the tramp was necessary and desirable in the making of the ideal Argentine woman. Focusing on this popular character of the Río de la Plata and based on a critique informed by crip and queer theory, this article examines how the aesthetic analysis of difference offers new methodologies to approach the notion of queerness and disability and the primary role they had in the context of literary modernization and the birth of modern ideas of citizenship, labor, and (re) productive capacity. Texts considered are “Mujer que vivió como un atorrante.” (1915), “El atorrante de por acá” (1894, chronicle) by Rubén Darío, “El atorrante” (1910, tango) by Luis Galván, El romance de un atorrante (1921, novel) by José Antonio Saldías, Ramera by Leonidas Barletta (1923, novel) and El linyera ( 1929, theater) by Ivo Pelay, among many others.
Article V
Buenos Aires’ Androgynous Panther:
Josephine Baker and the Spectacle of Racialized Queerness
Summary.
This article explores the multiple racial narratives that emerged in the 1920s Argentine cultural press around the jazz legend Josephine Baker (1906-1975). Numerous newspapers (Mundo Argentino, Caras y Caretas, Crítica, and Ahora, among others) and a novel (Luxuria: The Nocturnal Life of Buenos Aires, Cione, 1936) constructed Baker as an ungendered body through the tropes of primitivism, androgyny, orientalism, and sexual inversion. The chapter examines how Baker’s dance performances in her Argentine tour of 1929 generated new discourses on female racialized queerness in the Southern Cone and what are the implications for the history of blackness in regions other than the United States and the Caribbean. By reading this corpus of articles, this essay seeks to demonstrate how the emphasis on the extravagant, the camp, and the primitive of the performances defined the editorials’ tone regarding the presentations of the Revue Nègre at the Astral Theater in Buenos Aires. The paper argues that the racialized eroticization of Josephine Baker in the press is a constitutive part of what I will call a peripheral orientalism: Baker becomes the screen where critics projected their colonial desire for black female bodies, a systemic racism attached to a system of stratification of sex and gender shaped by visions of the Orient. Baker's queer and contortionist body would be reduced to a visual prosthesis of erotic stimulation for male readers, who, through its consumption reinforced a desire for racial and sexual supremacy that has not been investigated in depth in Río de la Plata Critical Race Studies.
Identification of key needs to ensure further uptake and success:
Short-term—1-2 years
Since the raw data was processed, the notes were taken, the drafts organized in outlines, the initial feedback by colleagues was received in the different conferences given, and the bibliography was consulted, the key needs to ensure sucess are:
1) Academic Publication: Publish the research findings in reputable Open Access peer-reviewed journals specializing in Latin American history, comparative literature, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies to ensure academic rigor and recognition.
(1) A monograph to be submitted possibly to the National University of La Plata Press. Originally, in my proposal, I proposed the University of Toronto Press. But since this press is not open access, I would consider the prestigious open access press Universidad Nacional de La Plata, one of the most important and recognized open repositories in the world: https://www.editorial.unlp.edu.ar/genero(opens in new window). This monograph is a long-term project that will extend the period of the tenure of my MSCA fellowship.
(2) Three singled- authored articles to be submitted to the open access journals possibly a) Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Latin American Research Review and Journal of Homosexuality b) Others considered: Anclajes (Universidad de La Pampa, Argentina) and Genre, Sexualité & Société (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, France). These articles will analyze the following topics: (a) the medicalized depiction of male queerness, trans*masculine expression and transvestism in literature; (b) the types of transgender affirmation that novelists, doctors, and playwrights condemned as ‘sexual inversion’ and crimes ‘against morality’; and (c) the role of disciplines such as endocrinology, psychiatry, legal medicine, and criminology in the making of the marimacho, a ‘monster gender’, a somatic construction that helped to solidify the cishetero scientific notion of ‘gender dysphoria.’
Conference Presentations: Present the research at international and regional conferences related to Latin American studies, gender studies, and history to engage with colleagues and receive feedback. In 2025, I will attend the LASA San Francisco Conference. https://lasaweb.org/en/lasa2024/upcoming-congresses/(opens in new window). Other conferences are being considered, such as the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, which will be held virtually, May 29 - June 1, 2025. https://www.acla.org/annual-meeting(opens in new window).
Collaboration with Cultural Institutions: Partner with cultural centers to organize exhibitions, lectures, and discussions that highlight the research findings and their contemporary relevance. The first institution to contact will be the Chicago Center Halsted to plan a lecture series as part of my third mission commitment. https://www.centeronhalsted.org(opens in new window).
Educational Materials: Create and distribute educational materials, such as lesson plans, multimedia presentations, and articles, for use in university courses to integrate my research into curricula. To be shared in Zenodo. See here first result: Halaburda, C. G. (2024, May 30). Programa de seminario avanzado. América Latina LGBTQ: escenas de la literatura, la ciencia y la cultura visual en contexto global (s XIX-XX-XXI). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11395388(opens in new window).
Long term—1-4 years
Digital Presence: Establish a dedicated website to share research updates, summaries of findings, and downloadable resources, making the research accessible to a broader audience. This website will be a collaborative enterprise among colleagues from Europe, the United States, and Latin America. But especially will be a platform where my students will contribute with blog entries, translations of 19th century queer materials (copyright free), and digital illustrations. The objective is to create a website with multiple kinds of engagements. A preliminary plan is deployed in the annex of this document.
Media Engagement: Write op-eds, participate in interviews, and collaborate with journalists to disseminate the research through newspapers, magazines, and online media platforms, reaching a wider audience. A preliminary plan is deployed in the annex of this document.
Community Engagement: Work with LGBTQ+ and women's rights organizations in Latin America to share findings and support advocacy efforts, ensuring the research has a direct impact on ongoing social justice movements. I have experience carrying out these initiatives. I gave lectures in the past with the Centro Ayelén in Tucumán, Argentina in 2022.
Public Outreach: Develop public lectures and workshops aimed at educating the general public and non-academic audiences about the findings to increase awareness of the historical roots of homophobia and misogyny in the context of the Global South. I began this initiative in Cologne in the Center Machado during the implementation of my project. I gave a public lecture on 10/04/2024. Find information here: http://spanischer-verein.com/?p=5957(opens in new window)
My long-term plan for exploitation includes mainly to adapt my academic research on the history of queerness in Latin America to digital humanities initiatives so I can make it more accessible, engaging, and interactive for multiple publics. This initiative will also be open access and will be available in Zenodo. Across different mediums and with the help and collaboration of students and experts of the Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) of the University of Chicago (https://digitalhumanities.uchicago.edu/project/center-for-digital-scholarship/(opens in new window)) I would like to pursue the following ideas that will give shape to the bigger project, the website The Queer Ancestries Digital Humanities Project.
Interactive Maps
1. Historical Timelines and Geolocations: Create interactive maps showing significant events, places, and figures in the history of homosexuality in Latin America and Europe. Some examples are the Ball of 41 in Mexico (1901), the visit of Josephine Baker to Buenos Aires (1929), and the publication of La Garçonne [La Marimacho] (1922) by Victor Margueritte in Buenos Aires and Latin America. Each location can have pop-up information, images, and links to primary sources or further readings. These geolocations will also be connected with my data set so scholars and the general public can access the reference data with relevant information on these historical and cultural events.
2. Migration and Cultural Exchange: Map out the migration patterns of LGBTQ+ individuals and communities, highlighting how cultural exchanges influenced LGBTQ+ identities and movements in the 19th century. Examples in my research are the Spanish travesties that migrated from Madrid to Buenos Aires in the late 1800s. I would engage students to contribute in this section of the website.
Infographics
1. Historical Timelines: Design infographics that visually represent key events, legal changes, and societal shifts regarding homosexuality in Latin America. These infographics will be available in Zenodo.
2. Cultural Impact: Develop infographics showing the influence of LGBTQ+ individuals and movements on Latin American and European culture, politics, and art. These infographics would have minimal information but would be visually impactful with QR codes leading to my data set for scholars and the public to find out more about the project.
Story Maps
1. Personal Stories: Use platforms like Esri Story Maps to combine maps, text, images, and videos to tell personal stories of LGBTQ+ individuals throughout history. These Story Maps would feature stories of queer women or queer characters related to my research and educational materials. I would consider founding a network of students and colleagues to contribute to this initiative. The StoryMap would feature a 3-5 minute video featuring a queer novel, a queer theatre play, or a song related to Trans Modernismo and would include a bibliography and a link to queer archives, such as the Schwule Museum Library of Berlin or the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institute of Berlin for the audience to keep the engagement.
Web Series in YouTube Channel and Available in Zenodo.
1. Educational Web Series: Develop a web series aimed at educating a broader audience about the history and struggles of LGBTQ+ individuals in Latin America and Europe and also Queer Literature. 30-minutes lectures led by me with content related to Trans Modernismo.
By utilizing these digital humanities approaches, I will bring my research to a wider audience, foster greater understanding and engagement, and preserve important historical narratives for future generations. These objectives and initiatives will help ensure that the research not only contributes to academic knowledge but also has a meaningful impact on public understanding of queer history.
Note on the future of the project beyond termination: As indicated in the amendment, these initiatives will be developed under a new institutional affiliation as of July 1st, 2024. I will be a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies: Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago. However, as indicated in article 17 of the GA, I will attend to my obligations to keep the principles of open science and successfully implement the DCE plan
Note on Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation milestones.
In the very initial phase of the project, dissemination has focused on presenting at conferences, invited talks, and workshops as well as sharing data sets in the respective repository (Zenodo). Sharing the first results was aimed at raising awareness among scholars and the general public. Following the generation of more extensive research results in the years to come in the shape of publications and the other initiatives outlined above, communication, dissemination, and exploitation will keep focusing on the academic community and civil society