El centenario de Ángel Rama: El legado de un intelectual "subversivo" en UMDl

The event will be held on Wednesday, February 11th from 2-4:30 pm in JMZ 1205. 

(Event in Spanish).

Panelists:

Ramiro Caces Barbosa, UMD

Facundo Gómez, CHI (UNQUI) - CONICET 

Maya Labarca, UMD

Thayse Lima, UMD

Saúl Sosnowski, UMD

The event centers on the life and legacy of Ángel Rama (1926–1983), a professor who worked in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Maryland from 1979 until his tragic death in a plane crash in 1983. His intellectual contributions—including the theory of transculturation, his work as a literary critic, and landmark texts such as The Lettered City—established him as a monumental figure in Latin American literary studies.

Despite earning tenure, he was never granted legal residency in the United States. Labeled a “subversive” by the U.S. government, a term used to imply communist sympathies, he found himself entangled in a Kafkaesque ordeal, forced to defend himself against accusations that were never fully disclosed. The alleged evidence against him was classified, leaving Rama unable to challenge or even fully understand the case the federal authorities had constructed.

Rama’s scholarship remains vital and widely cited, and his unjust treatment at the hands of U.S. immigration authorities continues to resonate today.