Arturo Arias

Who is Arturo Arias?

Arturo Arias is a Guatemalan novelist and critic, who is a professor of 20th-century Spanish-American Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught courses specializing in: Central American literature; Indigenous literatures; social and critical theory; race, gender and sexuality in post-colonial societies; cultural studies, and ethnographic approaches. Arias has previously taught at San Francisco State University and the University of Redlands in Southern California,and he is a past president of the Latin American Studies Association. Arias holds a PhD in Sociology of Literature, from L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Paris, France. He has published seven novels and four academic books. He received the Casa de las Américas prize for his novel Itzam Na, the Anna Seghers award for his novel Jaguar en llamas 1990, and the Casa de las Américas prize in essay for his book Ideología, Literatura y Sociedad durante the Revolución Guatemalteca, 1944-1954. His most recent novel is Arias de Don Giovanni.

His books in English includeThe Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, Taking their Word, After the Bombs, and Rattlesnake.