Irina Troconis

About

Irina Troconis is an Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University. She holds a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures from New York University and an MPhil Degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge (UK). Her areas of specialization include Memory Studies, Venezuelan Studies, Politics and Performance, Affect Theory, Visual Culture, Material Culture, and Digital Humanities. Professor Troconis is the co-organizer of the online conversation series (Re)thinking Venezuela/(Re)pensando a Venezuela, now in its fifth season. She authored the book 'The Necromantic State: Spectral Remains in the Afterglow of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution,' which explores spectrality and memory narratives around Hugo Chávez in the decade following his death. Her research projects examine cultural production connected to the Venezuelan diaspora, the politics of reenactment in Latin America, and the impact of new technologies on memory narratives and Latin American fiction. She is actively involved in academic service as a CIVIC Advisory Board Member, a graduate field member of Media Studies and the Department of Performing and Media Arts, and a core faculty member of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Steering Committee.

Research topics

• Art
• History
• Aesthetics
• Sociology
• Literature

Selected publications

• Leaky, Dead, and Restless: Afterdeath in Contemporary Venezuelan Fiction

  Latin American Literary Review · 2023-04-03 · 13 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article analyzes “Cadáver,” a short story in the collection Barrio bonito (2015), by Venezuelan author Luis Freites. It argues that, rather than creating an afterlife for the dead characterized by processes of mourning, commemoration, and memorialization, the story captures the body’s afterdeath: the slow decomposition and transformation of the corpse from organic matter to bones and dust. Through the staging of an aesthetic gesture described by Maikel—the story’s protagonist—as “mirar pa’d…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Unfinished Business: Visuality, Space, and the State in (Post) Socialist Venezuela

  Comparative Literature Studies · 2022-08-01 · 10 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT This article proposes (post)socialism as a conceptual lens to read the temporal dislocation and affective currents that define Venezuela’s current political and social reality and its relationship to the twenty-first-century socialism former president Hugo Chávez promised in 2006. It argues that this version of socialism, which claimed to be different from the ones that came before in Latin America and elsewhere, was translated into the country’s urban landscape in a visual display that…

  PublisherDOI

• Crafting Nationness: DIY Venezuela in Deborah Castillo’s<i>RAW</i>and Violette Bule’s<i>REQUIEM200≤</i>

  Latin American Research Review · 2021-06-15 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article proposes the concept of nationness to explore the nuances and complexities that permeate the symbolic and material efforts to remember, imagine, and re-present the nation among the diasporic community of Venezuelan artists. Focusing on Deborah Castillo’s exhibition RAW (2015) and Violette Bule’s installation REQUIEM200≤ (2018), it analyzes how the two artists engage in a form of crafting that re-presents the nation as raw matter (wood, nails, clay) that never achieves a state of com…

  PublisherDOI

• The Necromantic State

  2025-01-01

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Necromantic State

  2025-02-26

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Lorena M. Velásquez

  1 shared

Education

• PhD, Spanish and Portuguese

  New York University

  2019

• MPhil, Latin American Studies

  University of Cambridge

  2013

• Bachelor's, LJST/French

  Amherst College

  2011

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Enzo Traversoh-15