Abril Trigo is Distinguished Humanities Professor of Latin American Cultures at the Ohio State University and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies. His areas of specialization include Latin American Cultural Studies, literary and cultural theory, theater, film, and popular culture. He has published extensively on Latin American cultural studies, with particularemphasis on the historical formation of national imaginaries and their articulation to popular culture (rock, graffiti, candombe, soccer, etc.).

His publications include Caudillo, estado, nación. Literatura, historia e ideología en el Uruguay. (1990), ¿Cultura uruguaya o culturas linyeras? (Para una cartografía de la neomodernidad posuruguaya.) (1997), Memorias migrantes. Testimonios y ensayos sobre la diáspora uruguaya (2003), The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader, co-authored with Ana Del Sarto and Alicia Ríos (2004), and Crisis y transfiguración de los estudios culturales latinoamericanos (2012). Currently, he is working on A Critique of the Political-Libidinal Economy, a theoretical inquiry on the formation of value and subjectivity.

Courses taught:

• Identity, Ideology, Imaginary
• Globalization and Culture in Latin America
• Latin American Cognitive Mapping
• Globalization and Latin America: Multidisciplinary Approaches
• Dialéctica de la alteridad en América Latina
• El cine latinoamericano y el debate postcolonial
• Latin American Cinema and the Postcolonial Debate
• Modernidad, cultura y sociedad de masas: Buenos Aires, cosmópolis
• Teorías de la transculturación y los estudios culturales latinoamericanos
• El debate posmoderno en América Latina
• ¿Apocalípticos o integrados? Teoría, práctica e ideologías de la globalización
• Latin American Liberation Theology: Popular Religion and Cultural Politics
• Latin American Film: From the Aesthetics of Revolution to the Politics of Identity
• De la cultura del gaucho a la literatura y el teatro gauchescos
• Geopolítica y cultura en América Latina
• (Nuevo) cine latinoamericano: arte, política y revolución en Cuba, Argentina y Brasil
• De la Teología de la Liberación a la Filosofía de la Liberación
• ¿Cultura? ¿Y popular, dijo?

Current research projects:

Crisis y transfiguración de los estudios culturales latinoamericanos.This is a book-length essay which analyzes the main critical paradigms as well as the most significant debates which shaped the field of Latin Americal cultural studies, evaluates the present situation of the field and projects its future directions in the larger context of globalization.

Para una crítica de la economía político-libidinal de la cultura. Book-length essay on the cultural global processes which combines a critique of material production (economics), a critique of power (politics), and a critique of the production of desires and social meanings (the libidinal and the symbolic). The book will attempt on elaborating a critique of culture that brings together a critique of political economy, a critique of ideological hegemony and a critique of libidinal economy, the missing subject in cultural studies.