Miguel Rosas Buendia

Miguel Rosas Buendia is Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies in the School of Modern Languages. Originally from Lima, Peru, he earned a Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from Brown University. His research interests include history of science, environmental studies, and indigenous studies. Through the study of literary and scientific primary sources, he examines topics such as knowledge production, nationalism, and extractive industries, as well as the transatlantic exchange of ideas about the Pre-Columbian material culture. His book manuscript in progress, tentatively titled Crafting a Technoscientific Nation, examines the circulation of new scientific, engineering, and archaeological paradigms and their role in the question of nation-building in nineteenth century Peru. This inquiry is examined through the transatlantic intellectual trajectory, governmental work, and academic writings of the Peruvian scientist Mariano de Rivero (1798-1857). The book studies Rivero’s conceptual and practical involvement in three central subjects –the Andean territory and its natural resources (centrally mining), the Pre-Columbian material culture and its archaeological/national interpretation, and the future of the republic in the emerging industrial world. It argues that Rivero’s projects constitute a singular technoscientific view, which serves to examine with new lenses other takes on those subjects during the period. Trained in literary studies and cultural history, he has also published on poetry and travel writing, and examined the intersections between natural sciences, mining, and aesthetics in a global context.