Montserrat Madariaga-Caro
Montserrat Madariaga-Caro earned a B.A. in Humanities at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile (2007); a B.A. in Social Communication and the title of Journalist at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile (2008); an M.A. in Chilean and Hispano-American Literatures at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile (2015); and a Ph.D. in Iberian and Latin American Literatures and Cultures with a Graduate Portfolio in Native American and Indigenous Studies at The University of Texas at Austin (2022).
Dr. Madariaga-Caro’s research focuses on the intersections of Indigenous poetics, aesthetics, and micropolitics of land, life, and justice. Her current book project illuminates how the works of Indigenous Mapuche poets and artists invigorate land relations among humans and other ecological bodies and work against settler-colonialism, racial extractive capitalism, and compulsory cis-hetero socialization.
In addition, Dr. Madariaga-Caro’s work engages with Indigenous collections in museums. She is currently working on a research project on the Mapuche rütran (body adornments) collection at the Museo Histórico y Antropológico Maurice van de Maele in Valdivia, Chile, in collaboration with Mapuche-Williche artist Kütral Vargas Huaiquimilla.
Madariaga-Caro is on the steering committees of Vassar’s Latin American and Latinx Studies (LALS) and Vassar’s Office of Community-Engaged Learning. She is also affiliated with the Environmental Studies Program.
Pronouns: She/ella, but “they/elle” is also welcomed because life isn’t binary.
Research and Academic Interests
Mapuche poetics and micropolitics, Indigenous justice, Native autonomy, anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist thought and action in Latin America/Abiayala.
Departments and Programs
Courses
- HISP 205 Intermediate Spanish
- HISP 206 Reading and Writing About Hispanic Culture. Desbordes : Undoing Patriarchy in Latin America
- HISP / LALS 229 Postcolonial Latin America. Whose Lands: Indigenous, Criollo, and Mestizo Land Relations in Latin America
- HISP / LALS 229 Postcolonial Latin America. Micropolitics of Life: Chilean and Mapuche Poetics
- HISP / LALS 387 Latin American Seminar. Caring for the Land: Poetics and Politics of Crisis and Life in Latin America
Selected Publications
“Dying Well: Micropolitics of Life Against Terricidio in Mapuche Poetics” in Contesting the Climate Unthinkable: Latin American Cultural Responses to a Warming World. Ed. Ken Benson, Azucena Castro and Gianfranco Selgas. Foreword by Gabriel Giorgi. The University Press of Florida, 2025, pp. 25–35.
“Te llaman en lenguas raulíes y alerzarias: Poéticas de mujeres por el cuidado de la Mapu en territorio Mapuche-Williche”, en Hacer cantar la maravilla. Plantas medicinales en poemas de mujeres Chile-Wallmapu XX–XXI. Edited by Rubí Carreño, Claudia Rodríguez, and Estela Imigo. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2022, pp. 189–218.
“La ‘eroticidad’ de la Mapu: poética-política de recuperación territorial en Roxana Miranda Rupailaf y el video-poema El Shumpall”. Taller de Letras 67, Universidad Católica de Chile, 2020, pp. 91–105.