My research focuses on discourses of criticism and creativity in late twentieth to early twenty-first-century Spanish American literature, film, and culture. I am particularly interested in analyzing how various aesthetics (e.g., narrative, poetry, film and new approaches to media and poetics) connect and combine different perspectives in critique and creation. While pursuing my B.A. degree in Literary Studies and my master’s degree in Cultural Studies—with an emphasis in Critical Theory—I studied models of the critical essay that investigate philosophical, political, and aesthetical aspects of literary and cultural criticism.
My dissertation Impulsos críticos: escritos entre políticas y poéticas reveals the tensions between criticism and creation, focusing on the writings of Jorge Luis Borges (1989–1986), Ricardo Piglia (1941¬–2017), and Alan Pauls (1959). Their cases are unique as they establish a new literary criticism in the Southern Cone of Latin America. By using Borges’s poems and short stories as theoretical manifestos, Piglia’s novels and essays, and Pauls’ illustrated essays as examples of creative criticism, I show that in contemporary poetics, Latin American literary criticism experienced a radical transformation that challenges the limits of literary forms. Furthermore, I illustrate how these formal relations influence and complicate contemporary studies in literary and critical theory. My research was awarded the UC Davis & Humanities Graduate Research Fellowship and the prestigious Provost’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship at UC Davis.
I received the highly competitive Critical Theory Fellowship from the Critical Theory Program at UC Davis to attend the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University where I participated in the seminar “Scenes of Translation” with Dr. Souleymane Bachir Diagne. I was also awarded by The New School for Social Research the opportunity to attend the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry. These intellectual journeys culminated in my article “Hopes for Walter Benjamin in Latin America” —submitted for initial review—in which I trace the reception of the Frankfurt School in the world of Latin American academia, and the impact of the first Spanish translations of Benjamins’ works on the Latin American intellectual life during the censorship imposed by military regimes in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela between 1930 and 1980. My scholarship is anchored in Spanish American culture but also has an interdisciplinary approach. I am especially interested in the comparative analysis of literary and visual works by authors, visual artists, and filmmakers from the Southern Cone who have also played an active role in academia. I argue that the criticism conceived by writers and artists is a self-reflection that generates a pedagogical subversion against the centripetal discourses in art and politics. My long-term research goals reflect an ongoing interest in neo and post avant-garde aesthetics as well as new media poetics, digital narratives, gaming, and transmedia storytelling.
My monograph study La poética de Saúl Yurkievich en la estética neovanguardista (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2005) was awarded the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language Award by the Royal Spanish Academy in the category of Best Bachelor Dissertation written in Latin American universities between 2003 and 2007.
My contribution to Latin American studies has been cited in Latin American Documentary Film in the New Millennium(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) by María Guadalupe Arenillas and Michael J. Lazzara; Experiencing Latin American Music(University of California Press, 2018) by Carol A. Hess, and Un paraíso sospechoso: La vorágine de José Eustasio Rivera: novela e historia [Opera Eximia] (Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2020)/Paraíso suspeito: A voragem amazônica (Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2017) by Leopoldo M. Bernucci.
Academic Conferences
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “El factor Borges: cinemática y topología del ensayo según Alan Pauls”. Accepted at the 2018 Congreso del Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana [iili], Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, Universidad de Pittsburgh, E.U. y Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “327 cuadernos de Andrés Di Tella: documentalismo privado/público de los diarios de Ricardo Piglia”. Accepted at the 2018 Latin American Studies Association Congress, LASA 2018: Latin American Studies in a Globalized World, Barcelona, Spain.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “Ricardo Piglia o la máquina de leer”. Accepted at the 2018 Congreso Internacional: Ricardo Piglia The Master. Universidad de Almería, España.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “Pedagogías gráficas": Adquisición, comprensión conceptual y pensamiento crítico con narrativas ilustradas en el aula de ESL”. 2017 Simposio Internacional ELE “La Enseñanza del arte, el español, la historia y la literatura a extranjeros: Diversidad cultural y variedades lingüísticas”, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “Hopes of Walter Benjamin for Latin America”. Accepted at the 2017 International Walter Benjamin Society Conference, ‘Walter Benjamin and Method’, Worcester College, University of Oxford, England.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “Literatura expandida” & “biografémica”: Mario Bellatin, Héctor Libertella y César Aira en las lecturas de Alan Pauls. Presented at the 2014 10th Annual Colloquium in Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of California, Davis, USA.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. De los neologismos en torno a Yurkievich: la escritura “urobórica”. Presented at the 2013 Biennial Graduate Student Conference, University of Pittsburgh, USA.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. Autopsie on Friedrich Nietzsche’s Scriptural Body. Presented at the 2013 Annual Colloquium on Latin American and Peninsular Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of California, Davis, USA.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. Sobre el goce crítico y el ensayo como “creática”: Saúl Yurkievich, Ricardo Piglia & Alan Pauls. Presented at the 2013 Annual Graduate Portuguese and Hispanic Symposium, Georgetown University, Washington, USA.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. Thanatopías technicolor: memoria traumática y duelo en el documental animado. Waltz with Bashir (Israel, 2008) y Born under Fire (Colombia, 2010). Presented at the 2012 Biennial Graduate Student Conference of Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies University of Illinois, Chicago, USA.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “El mal paga” El estereotipo del sicario en el cine colombiano contemporáneo. Presented at the 2010 Annual Colloquium on Latin America, Iberian Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of California, Davis, USA.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. Políticas y poéticas de la escritura crítica. Presented at the 2008 Encuentro Nacional de Estudiantes de Literatura –VI ENEL, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Bucaramanga, Colombia.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. El limo metodológico, aproximaciones a la teoría poética. Presented at the 2006 Jornadas Andinas de Literatura Latinoamericana Estudiantiles –JALLA-E, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. La crítica lúdica o la instancia “creática”. Presented at the 2005 Jornadas Andinas de Literatura Latinoamericana Estudiantiles –JALLA-E, Universidad Santiago de Chile, Chile.
Díaz-Luna, Sergio. Vaivenes y sobrevuelos, concomitancias del exilio literario: el caso de Saúl Yurkievich entre París y Buenos Aires. Presented at the 2005 Bienal de Literatura Mariano Picón-Salas, Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela.
Publications
1. 2020. Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “Viral Diary: Creatical Writings I”. Longwood: Life during COVID-19. 45. Greenwood Library, Special Collections and Archives, Longwood University. ☛ https://digitalcommons.longwood.edu/covid19/45/
2. 2016.Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “3 Poemas/ 3 Poems” A selection of poetry from The Quantum Poetics Handbook.Desbandada Nº 10. San Francisco: Desbandada Press, October. ☛ goo.gl/Zl2L0W
3. 2015. Díaz-Luna, Sergio. Conceptual Writing Fanzine. Kafkaesque Edition. A collection of short stories, poems, excerpts and illustrations. Author's Edition. UC Davis, October. Print.
4. 2013. Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “El vaivén Borges.” Review of Borges, Between History and Eternity by Hernán Díaz (New York: Continuum, 2012) in A Contracorriente, Departamento de Lenguas y Literaturas Extranjeras, North Carolina State University. Vol 10, Nº 3. ☛ https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/746
5. 2010. Díaz-Luna, Sergio. Vida latinomericana y literatura. Bogotá: Editorial Voluntad. Print. ☛ http://goo.gl/O1IeQb
6. 2007. Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “El doblez de la escritura en Jacques Derrida,” in Hojas y hablas. Bogotá: Fundación Universitaria Monserrate, Nº 4, November. Print.
7. 2007. Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “Ni se te ocurra regalarme un Picasso,” in Plup. Daniel Bonilla, ed., Bogotá: Ediciones Tarántula. Print. ☛ http://plupbook.blogspot.com 8. 2004. Díaz-Luna, Sergio and María Briceño. “Despegando de Siberia para alzarse en vuelo sobre los Andes. Análisis bajtiniano a un etnotexto de la cultura Quechua,” in Memorias del II Encuentro Universitario de Teoría y Crítica Literaria. Bogotá: Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Print.
9. 2004. Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “La lupa de Puláx,” in Antología, Escritores Hispanoamericanos en el mundo, Argentina: Editorial Bellvigraf. Print.
10. 2002. Díaz-Luna, Sergio. “¿Wax a Cat?” (short story) in Desde la universidad. Cuentos Javerianos. Bogotá: Centro Editorial Javeriano, CEJA. Print. ☛ https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/5611353
Data Base by Michael Mandiberg [2011]
Kalligraphisch Schriftvorlagen by Johann Hering [circa 1620's].