Overview
Irina R. Troconis is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of Romance Studies. 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. She is the co-organizer of the online conversation series (Re)thinking Venezuela/(Re)pensando a Venezuela, currently in its fifth season.
Professor Troconis’s first book, The Necromantic State: Spectral Remains in the Afterglow of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution (Duke University Press, 2025) explores through the lens of spectrality the memory narratives and practices developed around the figure of Hugo Chávez in the decade following his death. She is also working on three new research projects. The first one examines how the recent cultural production connected to the Venezuelan diaspora engages with issues of nostalgia, materiality, and loss. The second one considers the politics of reenactment in Latin America by analyzing a selection of performances and documentaries produced in the last thirty years. The third one explores the changes new technologies have triggered in the memory narratives, practices, and theories that shape contemporary Latin American fiction.
Professor Troconis is also a CIVIC Advisory Board Member, a graduate field member of Media Studies, and of the Department of Performing and Media Arts, and a core faculty member of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Steering Committee. More information about LACS can be found here.
Research Focus
- Venezuelan Studies
- Politics and Performance
- Critical Theory
- Affect Theory
- Memory Studies
- Material Culture
- Digital Humanities
Publications
French Kissing the Icon: Erotic Iconoclash and Political Subversion in Deborah Castillo’s The Emancipatory Kiss (2013) (available here: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/3W5V7K9X8UWZZ8GZXHHH/full?target=10.1080/13569325.2023.2261419)
Memorias translúcidas: identidad, materialidad y pérdida en Crisálida de Pepe López (available here: https://lawebdelasalud.com/memorias-translucidas-identidad-materialidad-y-perdida-en-crisalida-de-pepe-lopez/)
La literatura nacional como anxiety bookshelf: Una conversación (pendiente) con Osdany Morales sobre Lengua materna (available here: https://latinamericanliteraturetoday.org/es/2024/06/la-literatura-nacional-como-anxiety-bookshelf-una-conversacion-pendiente-con-osdany-morales-sobre-lengua-materna/
“Leaky, Dead, and Restless: Afterdeath in Contemporary Venezuelan Fiction.” 2023, Latin American Literary Review, 50, no. 100.
"Presentación del dossier. Literatura y escritura hecha por mujeres en el siglo XXI: lenguaje y (re) posicionamientos posibles en la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea." Baciyelmo Vol. 16, No. 4, 2022. Co-edited with Lorena M. Velásquez.
"Unfinished Business: Visuality, Space and the State in (Post) Socialist Venezuela." Comparative Literature Studies Vol. 59, No. 3, 2022, pp 527-548. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/863485/pdf
“‘Pequeñas rebeldías’: Cuerpo, materialidad y resistencia en Pelo malo (2013) de Mariana Rondón.” Akademos. Volume 22, number 1 and 2 (2021). Available at: http://saber.ucv.ve/ojs/index.php/rev_ak/issue/view/Akademos%2022%2C%202020/showToc
Troconis, I. R. (2021). Crafting Nationness: DIY Venezuela in Deborah Castillo’s RAW and Violette Bule’s REQUIEM200≤. Latin American Research Review, 56(2), 437–456. DOI: http://doi.org/10.25222/larr.1113
“Echoes in the Desert: Digging Out the Disappeared in the Digital Age.” The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory (MAST). Vol. 1, Issue 2: “Media, Materiality, and Emergency” (November 2020). Available at: https://www.mast-journal.org/vol-1-no-2-2020
“Violette Bule: Subversive Echoes.” In Violette Bule’s Echo Chamber Exhibit Catalogue. Houston: The Transart Foundation for Art and Anthropology (2020).
“RAW: La carne del pasado.” Trópico Absoluto (October 2019). Available at: https://tropicoabsoluto.com/?p=1961
with Alejandro Castro (eds.) Deborah Castillo: Radical Disobedience. New York: HemiPress, 2019.
Reviewed in Cuadernos de Literatura, Pontificia Universidad
Javeriana: https://revistas.javeriana.edu.co/index.php/cualit/index
“Spectral Remains: Under Hugo Chávez’s Gaze.” Esferas (May 2019): 192-201.
“Invocando el espectro: Prácticas de la memoria en la Venezuela pos-Chávez.” Revista Iberoamericana. LXXXV. 266 (January-March 2019): 85-98.
“El Iluminado: Ilan Stavans and the Incongruity of the Anti-hero.” In Stavans Unbound. Boston: Academic Studies Press (2019).
“Venezuelan Literature.” Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets. Latin American Studies. Ed. Ben Vinson. New York: Oxford University Press (2019).
with Ilan Stavans. “Venezuelan-Americans.” Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets. Latino Studies (2014).