Julio Ramos

Julio Ramos has written extensively about literary and visual culture in Latin America and the Caribbean. His books include Desencuentros de la modernidad en América Latina: literatura y política en el sigo XIX (1989; translated by John D. Blanco as Divergent Modernities in 2002), Paradojas de la letra (1996, 2007), and Sujeto al límite: ensayos de cultura literaria y visual (2012). In 1990 Ramos edited and introduced Amor y anarquía: los escritos de Luisa Capetillo. His audiovisual and documentary work includes La promesa (1995, co-directed with M. Panasitti, N. Schüll, C. Penna et al., LASA Film Festival Merit Award), Detroit´s Rivera: The Labor of Public Art (2017, Gran Premio, Festival Internacional de Documentales Santiago Alvarez, and Ibizacinefest, Mejor Corto Documental), Mar Arriba: Los conjuros de Silvia Cusicanqui (2011), and Retornar a La Habana con Guillén Landrián (2014), co-directed with Raydel Araoz. Since retiring from UC Berkeley in 2010, Ramos has continued to work as an independent researcher and has taught as a visiting professor or adjunct at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (Quito), Universidad de Puerto Rico (Río Piedras), Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (Cuba), Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Universidad de Buenos Aires, University of Pennsylvania, and Fordham University.

Andrés Bello Chair In Latin American Cultures And Civilizations

Officially inaugurated in December, 2001, the Andrés Bello Chair in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations was established at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, thanks to an extraordinary gift from the CITGO Petroleum Corporation, the American subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela. The endowed Chair honors one of the greatest political and intellectual figures of the American hemisphere, the Venezuelan-born humanist, poet, scholar, diplomat, and public intellectual Andrés Bello (1781-1865). Essayist, historian, and linguistic and legal scholar, Bello wrote poetry, history, legal works, and was a remarkable scholar of the Spanish language. As a philologist, he compiled one of the most important Spanish modern grammars for the Americas. Andrés Bello is also remembered as the founder of the University of Chile and a great promulgator Chile’s Civil Code.

The Chair allows the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center to bring to NYU leading scholars of Latin American culture as visiting professors and researchers, and to support conferences and public lectures centered on the Andrés Bello Professorship.

In addition to being a major educational and scholarly resource, the Andrés Bello Chair is a sign of New York University’s longstanding commitment to promoting interdisciplinary research and teaching on contemporary Latin America cultures and civilizations.

ATRIUM: Voices from the KJCC

In April 2022, NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center turned 25. To commemorate this milestone, we produced ATRIUM: Voices from the KJCC, an oral history project that captures memories of the KJCC through the recorded testimonies of our past Chairs going as far back as the ’80s, before the Center was as we know it today: a robust cultural and educational institution that hosts both the Andrés Bello and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Chairs.

Below we present a historic reel with the voices of some of our interviewees for the project:

You can also watch the individual interviews of the series here.

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In Residence

Julio Ramos

Past Events