Héctor Hoyos in Spain

Director of the Center for Latin American Studies, Héctor Hoyos is a professor of Iberian and Latin American cultures and, by courtesy, of comparative literature at Stanford. He holds a PhD in Romance studies from Cornell University and has degrees in philosophy and literature from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. His numerous publications include two monographs, both published in New York with Columbia University Press: Beyond Bolaño: The Global Latin American Novel (2015), where he examines post-1989 Latin American novels of globalization and their relevance to world literature, and Things with a History: Transcultural Materialism and the Literatures of Extraction in Contemporary Latin America (2019), where he analyzes literary representations of raw materials, objects and commodities in the region.

During our walk, Professor Hoyos will explore Spain’s connection to the New World and the role religion played in shaping history and culture across the Atlantic. He will also examine the modern country's relationship with her troubled past through literature and film, ending with an appraisal of late-20th-century and contemporary movements of cultural transformation. 

• Director, Center for Latin American Studies, since 2024

• Professor, Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Stanford University, since 2008; Director, 2019–2023

• Director, Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Modern Thought and Literature, 2019–2022

• Fellow, Clayman Institute for Gender Research, 2023–2024

• Chair, materia, a multidisciplinary forum on Latin American and comparative post-anthropocentrisms, Stanford University, ongoing since 2014

• Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow, Berlin, 2015–2016

• Faculty in residence, Bing Overseas Studies Program, Santiago—2011, 2016, and 2023; Kyoto—2019; Berlin—2019

• Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center, 2012–2013