Thanks to the generous support of the Center for European Studies and the UT Libraries, I was recently able to travel to London, England and Lisbon, Portugal. On my trip, I had the chance to attend a scholarly conference, acquire unique materials to add to UTL’s collections, network with academics, vendors, and librarians, and purchase books for the UT Libraries’ collections.
A street in London lined with bookstores containing antiquarian and rare books.
My time in London was an invaluable opportunity to build stronger connections with an international cohort of colleagues. For example, I met with one of the UT Libraries’ vendors who I work with to procure rare materials on early twentieth century European politics. The vendor I met with, Carl Slienger, frequently supplies us with items not held by any other North American libraries, making the materials he sources very important for our distinctive holdings of pamphlets and other propagandistic literature, as well as antiquarian books that enhance our holdings of rare and unique European occult and spiritualist materials. I also met with a colleague at the British Library to discuss coding workflows and best practices for working with digital materials. Meeting with my colleague at the British Library was likewise very beneficial, as much of my work involving digital methodologies is focused on programming in Python and other languages, and I am currently supervising a project focused on using Python to automate digital archival workflows.
Ian outside of the British Library.
In Lisbon, I attended and presented at the The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) Digital Humanities 2025 conference. My poster presentation focused on software packages I have written in the Rust programming language to support multilingual computational approaches to linguistics and digital humanities. My poster highlighted three software packages: a package for performing lemmatization, a key natural language processing task, on text; a package for assessing the readability of a text containing a variety of algorithms to choose from; and a package to perform stylometric analysis on text. They were all built with multilingual support in mind, and as such are specifically designed to move outside of an Anglocentric paradigm often found in technologies for natural language processing and textual analysis, creating new opportunities for multilingual and non-English textual analysis and digital humanities. Beyond my own presentation, I was able to attend talks on other digital research methodologies throughout the conference. Being able to attend talks by colleagues from all around the globe was both invigorating and rewarding, and an invaluable way to stay on top of the current research being done in the digital humanities. I also took the opportunity to acquire a small amount of zines while in Lisbon, adding to our collection of unique materials that we would not be able to purchase without undergoing a foreign acquisitions trip.
The poster session area at the DH 2025 conference in Lisbon.
This trip allowed me the opportunity to represent UT Austin internationally to a diverse group of colleagues, and I’m grateful that I was able to serve the Libraries in such a capacity. I look forward to building on our distinctive holdings and further expanding UT’s collections while continuing to work on using digital methodologies to enhance accessibility for research and open source software.
Everyday Knowledge in Early Meiji Japan from UT Libraries’ Collections
“Illuminating Explorations” – This series of digital exhibits is designed to promote and celebrate UT Libraries collections in small-scale form. The exhibits will highlight unique materials to elevate awareness of a broad range of content. “Illuminating Explorations” will be created and released over time, with the intent of encouraging use of featured and related items, both digital and analog, in support of new inquiries, discoveries, enjoyment and further exploration.
The Braisted Collection
This exhibit highlights a selection of items from the Braisted Collection on Meiji Japan. The Braisted Collection was gifted to the UT Libraries by the late Professor Emeritus of History, Dr. William R. Braisted (1918–2017) in 2000. A Maryland native, Braisted was the son of an American naval officer and spent many of his early years in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and mainland China. He attended the Shanghai American School for part of his high school. Later, he received a BA from Stanford University and eventually an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1950. Braisted started teaching at the University of Texas at Austin in 1942 and retired in 1988,[1] and he was the founder of the East Asian Collections at UT Austin. Impressed by what he saw at the coastal elite institutions, especially the Harvard-Yenching Library, Braisted started advocating for and later became involved in building a working collection for Asian histories at the UT campus. In the 1950s, Braisted persuaded the History Department to provide funds to build the collection, when the University Libraries did not have an independent acquisition budget and relied on departmental funds to purchase materials. The first purchase order for Japanese materials was placed in 1953.[2] Before the first Asian Librarian, Dr. Tamie Tsuchiyama (1914–1984), arrived at UT in 1967, Braisted was instrumental in selecting and building UT’s East Asian collections.
The donation included many pre-20th-century materials, which were likely acquired by Braisted during his Fulbright trip to Japan from 1955 to 1956. At that time, Braisted was interested in researching the intellectual and political histories around the “Japanese Enlightenment” during the Meiji Restoration, and his attention specifically dwelt on a group of intellectual elites known as the “Meiroku club.” In popular historiography, the Meiji Restoration in 1868 marks the beginning of Japan’s “modern” era, when a group of rebellious and reformist Samurai overthrew the Edo Bakufu and “restored” the country to the rule under the Meiji Tennō. However, in their political outlooks, the Meiji political elite championed political, social, and military reforms modelled after the post-Enlightenment West. The Meiroku club, around whom Braisted built this collection, was a leading group of educators, politicians, and scholars who contributed to the reformist discourses during the early Meiji years.
Braisted’s research into the club ultimately culminated in his translation of the entire run of the Meiroku Zasshi 明六雑誌, the magazine edited and published by the group. For this project, he collected works written by the major figures in this intellectual circle, including Katō Hiroyuki 加藤弘之 (1836–1916), Nishimura Shigeki 西村茂樹 (1828–1902), Fukuzawa Yukichi 福沢諭吉 (1835–1901), Nishi Amane 西周 (1829–1897), and Mitsukuri Rinshō 箕作麟祥 (1846–1897).
Beyond works by these luminary figures, the Braisted Collection also included many books that were popular during the era, including textbooks, handbooks, news magazines, compilations of laws, parliamentary papers, etc. Last but not least, Braisted also meticulously collected Japanese scholarly monographs on the history, culture, diplomacy, and politics of the Meiji era.
This Exhibit
The Meiji era was a period of confusing and competing ideologies and thoughts, and many intellectuals shared an urgency and impulse to influence and educate the “masses” while a nationwide school system was being designed and built. This exhibit showcases some of the products of this dynamic moment in Japanese intellectual and cultural history. Many of the books were either produced to educate the general literate populace or to provide practical knowledge for everyday use. Also, books produced in this era appeared in different physical formats and had different appearances, as machine-powered printing technologies were making their way into Japan, while centuries-old woodblock printing still persisted.
Let’s start with the material hybridity of the books in this exhibit. Although post-Enlightenment wisdom from Europe flooded into Japan in the 1860s, industrialized book production did not move that quickly. Most of the books published in this era, as we see in this collection, were continuously made and bound in the traditional wasō 和裝 format and printed by woodblocks. Many continued to receive the iconic yellow cover from the Edo era, though some of those that were rushed to the market, for example, the news magazines, did not. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, industrialized printing became more widely available to Japanese publishers. Moveable type letterpress hence replaced the woodblocks to become the most prevalent way to print. However, many of the books still preserve the physical appearances one would expect to see in a woodblock, such as the frames that surround the texts and the vertical, right-to-left textual arrangement.
Before metal types became widely available in the late nineteenth century, woodblocks remained the primary way that Japanese books were made. As a versatile and flexible medium, woodblock can reproduce many different types of texts and images. An interesting example in this exhibit is the woodblock reprinted Dutch physics textbook, titled in Japanese Kakuchi mondō 格致問答 (Questions and answers in studies of the physical world). The book was published in the Netherlands by letterpress in 1814. Its Japanese publisher, Mitsukuri Rinshō, however, reproduced it by woodblock using his own handwriting.
FIGURE 1 First page in the main body of Kakuchi mondō
During the majority portion of the Edō era, the Dutch were the only Europeans allowed to maintain trade relations with Japan. Although they were physically confined on a small island called Dejima outside of Nagasaki, European knowledge, mediated by the Dutch merchants, penetrated into the Edō intellectual scene. A field called rangaku 蘭学 (Dutch Learning) emerged, but such studies were largely confined to medicine and natural studies. Mitsukuri was appointed by the last Shogun to lead the short-lived Bakufu office/school, Bansho shirabejo 蕃書調所, to study and collect Dutch books. The other Dutch book on the language’s syntax and grammar was also published by Mitsukuri in a similar manner.
Last but not least, this exhibit also includes a field manual for farmers from the Edō period, Seiu benran 晴雨便覧 (A convenient companion of sun and rain), dated to 1767. It includes sophisticated illustrations and diagrams informing farmers how to make decisions on agricultural activities. It was a ground-breaking work not only as a primer for understanding weather conditions but also to teach readers how to predict weather, considering both local geography and meteorological phenomena.[3]
FIGURE 2 Page 5a, vol. 1 in Seiu benran
The Meiji intellectuals’ push to educate the Japanese mass was also reflected in their efforts to establish schools across the country. The literacy/vocabulary primer, Tangō zue 単語図会 (Illustrated vocabulary) was published by one of the earliest normal schools established by the reformist Meiji elite. Its compilers were concerned that the Japanese children lacked an authoritative and systematic source of vocabulary of the new era. The vocabulary introduced in it range from everyday items from clothes to books, natural phenomena to new scientific notions. The book was produced using woodblocks and printed in color.
FIGURE 3 Page 6a in Tangō zue
The anthology Meiji bunhan 明治文範 (Model essays of the Meiji era) was compiled for students in Japan’s emerging normal schools in the early twentieth century. Normal schools themselves were complicated institutions. The student body of a normal school was often made up of teenagers and those in their twenties, and they would be assigned to schools at different levels after graduation. The anthology included in this exhibit was aimed at cultivating a baseline literary capability for the country’s new teachers. The essays included traditional literary poetry, an excerpt of the Meiji constitution, and newspaper articles.
[1] Braisted 1947 report, Faculty-Staff Teaching Staff Personal Faculty Files, Biographical Data, Box/Vol/Ser no(s) 4S 77, UT Department of History Records, University of Texas Archive, Austin, TX. A detailed account of Braisted’s early intellectual journey can be found in William R. Braisted, Diplomats in Blue: U.S. Naval Officers in China, 1922-1933, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009), Preface.
[2] Susan Napier, “The Japanese Collection at the University of Texas,” The Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin, vol. 27, no.3, 49–51.
[3] Yoko Ogasawara 小笠原洋子, “Edo jidai no hitobito no daiki genshō ni taisuru ninshiki ni tsuite: minyō seiu benran saikō江戸時代の人々の大気現象に対する認識について : 『民用晴雨便覧』再考,” Otya no mizu tiri お茶の水地理, v. 38 (June 1997), 1¬–9.
The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is pleased to announce the acquisition of literary and family archives of Colombian writer Andrés Caicedo. This collection joins other important regional literary collections of writers such as César Vallejo, Augusto Roa Bastos, and Julio Cortázar, increasing the importance of the Benson as a destination for students, faculty, and researchers from the United States, Latin America, and beyond.
Title page of “El Atravesado.” Benson Latin American Collection.
Within a decade of the publication of 100 Years of Solitude, which propelled Gabriel García Márquez and Colombia to the forefront of the Latin American literary scene, a 21-year-old Caicedo was self-publishing his first novela. El Atravesado (1975) was printed with a stamp opposite the title page reading Pirata Ediciones de Calidad (Pirata Quality Editions). Adorning the cover is a Ramones-esque sketch that the author had copied and enhanced from a bootlegged Rolling Stones album cover: a sunglasses-clad rebellious youth in front of a deteriorating and graffitied wall, a chain in one hand and a bloody knife in the other, ready for a fight. The story is one of youth in street gangs who have lost all faith in adulthood, living in the chaos of urban disorder, brawls, and parties, who yearn for a better world.
Inside cover of “El Atravesado,” with handwritten dedication and Ediciones Pirata seal. Benson Latin American Collection.
An intellectually curious lover of movies and letters, Caicedo began writing at the age of 10 and never stopped. He wrote plays, published stories in newspapers, and published Ojo al Cine, a film magazine that ran from 1974 to 1976. On March 4, 1977, at the age of 25, just after receiving the editor’s copy of his first published full-length novel, Que viva la música, Caicedo died by suicide. Que viva la música went on to become his best-known work, and would give voice to a generation of Colombia’s youth, offering a socially realistic alternative to the magical realism of García Márquez and other writers of the Latin American Boom.
Cover of issue 5 of the film criticism magazine “Ojo al Cine.” Benson Latin American Collection.
Caicedo already had a loyal following by the time of his death, but most of his writing was never published, or was limited to local and serial publications. His father, with whom he had fraught relations, discovered many of his manuscripts several years after his death. He led the creation of a family foundation dedicated to preparing and publishing the entire corpus of Caicedo’s writing. Caicedo’s renown has continued growing as publications are translated and published until today.
Review of “The Godfather 2” by Andrés Caicedo, including creative use of onomatopoeia, published in El Pueblo Estravagario.
The Andrés Caicedo Collection contains materials collected by the author’s sister, Rosario Caicedo, and includes manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, rare publications, press clippings, and family photo albums. Some of the most important documents in the collection are letters to and from his parents, Carlos Alberto and Nellie Estela, and his sister, Rosario, in the last years of his life. Several folders in the collection document Caicedo’s involvement in the Cine Club de Cali, including issues of the magazine Ojo al Cine. Finally, family photo albums of his parents and grandparents document the life of his family in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Letter from Caicedo to his father, signed ‘Tu Hijo (Que te pesa)’. Benson Latin American Collection.
This collection supplements the Archivo Andrés Caicedo, donated by the family to the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá, Colombia, and helps present a side of Caicedo that brings a wider understanding to his life and his literary corpus. View the contents of the archive at Texas Archival Resources Online.
The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is pleased to announce the acquisition of the literary archive of distinguished Mexican author and professor Cristina Rivera Garza, a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship. This archive enhances the Benson’s extensive collection of materials that embody Latin American literary tradition, intellectual thought, and leadership, reflecting the stature of the library and the University of Texas at Austin campus as an invaluable resource for students, faculty, and researchers globally.
Cristina Rivera Garza, born in 1964 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, is one of the most influential and innovative contemporary Mexican authors. She has been the recipient of Mexico’s most prestigious literary accolades, including the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, which she won twice. Her writing defies traditional literary genres, blending historical research, speculative fiction, and linguistic experimentation to challenge dominant narratives and conventional storytelling.
The author Cristina Rivera Garza, center, with her mother, left, and her sister Liliana Rivera Garza. Undated photo. Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, Benson Latin American Collection.
Rivera Garza’s works, including Nadie me verá llorar (1999), Dolerse: Textos desde un país herido (2011), El mal de la taiga (2012), and El invencible verano de Liliana (2023), engage deeply with themes of gender violence, loss, and memory. Through these narratives, she explores Mexico’s complex socio-political landscape, giving voice to silenced histories.
The Benson Latin American Collection presents An Evening with Cristina Rivera Garza on Monday, April 14, 2025. Find details here.
Rivera Garza grew up along the U.S.–Mexico border, a region rich in cultural traditions and marked by the fluidity of languages, identities, and experiences. This liminal space shaped her literary and academic sensibilities, fostering a transnational perspective that permeates her work. She studied urban sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a premier academic institution, and later earned a doctoral degree in Latin American history from the University of Houston. This academic background plays a crucial role in her writing, allowing her to seamlessly weave together fiction, poetry, and scholarly research.
Rivera Garza’s acclaimed novel Nadie me verá llorar (1999) exemplifies her unique ability to fuse historical research with fiction. Set in a mental health institution in early-twentieth-century Mexico, the novel tells the tragic love story of Joaquín, a photographer and addict, and Matilda, a rebellious patient whose life defies social conventions. However, the novel transcends this romantic premise. It has become a powerful meditation on how medical discourse and institutional power define sanity and madness in Mexico’s tempestuous historical past. Through her prose, Rivera Garza captures the fragility of memory while critiquing the oppressive systems that define these mental states.
Page proof of English translation of No One Will See Me Cry, with query. Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, Benson Latin American Collection.
Language itself has become a central theme in Rivera Garza’s work. She experiments with form, voice, and narrative structure, often incorporating archival fragments, poetic interludes, and hybrid genres. In works like Dolerse: Textos desde un país herido, La muerte me da, and El invencible verano de Liliana, the author uses language not only as a medium of expression, but as a tool of resistance. She gives voice to the grief and trauma of gender-based violence, while simultaneously interrogating the silences imposed by official histories and institutionalized narratives.
Cristina Rivera Garza, right, with her sister Liliana Rivera Garza. Undated photo. Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, Benson Latin American Collection.
El invencible verano de Liliana (2021, published in English as Liliana’s Invincible Summer in 2023) is one of her most intimate and politically charged works. This book serves as a tribute to her younger sister, Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in the summer of 1990. Written decades later, the text functions both as an act of remembrance and a form of literary justice. Through its narrative, Rivera Garza reconstructs Liliana’s life and the circumstances surrounding her death by utilizing her sister’s personal writings, diary entries, letters, and official documents. In doing so, she transcends traditional literary classifications and crafts a work that challenges the conventions of genre. In prose that encapsulates the intimacy of sisterhood, she deploys precise language that condemns the systemic impunity and gender-based violence that persists in Mexico.
Cover, “El invencible verano de Liliana.”
Rivera Garza captures the essence of the women’s resistance movement against gender violence in a deeply personal yet politically charged reflection. When she writes, “These grassroots movements have attracted more and more women, younger women, women who grew up in a city, and a country, that harasses them every step of every day, never leaving them alone or offering respite. Women always about to die. Women dying and yet alive” (Liliana’s Invincible Summer, p. 9). The repetition of the word women underscores the collective suffering, while the paradox—“women dying and yet alive”—conveys the precarious existence of women living under constant threat, trapped in a liminal space between life and death.
Integrating her sister’s voice through preserved writings becomes Rivera Garza’s ultimate act of resistance—one that not only prevents the erasure of victims, but also critiques the sanitized language of legal and forensic reports, exposing the dehumanizing bureaucracy that often surrounds cases of femicide. By capturing the complexity of mourning and the struggle for justice, Rivera Garza denounces a broader social epidemic while issuing a powerful call to remember, fight, and resist.
Through her bold and experimental body of work, Cristina Rivera Garza has redefined the boundaries of Latin American literature. Her writing follows in the footsteps of a constellation of authors such as María Luisa Puga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Alicia Gaspar de Alba, whose archives are also held at the Benson, offering readers a powerful lens through which to examine the intersections of personal and collective memory, violence, and resistance.
Student literary publication from UNAM. Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, Benson Latin American Collection.
Poem published during her time at UNAM. Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, Benson Latin American Collection.
The Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, now part of the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin, contains poetry, photographs, essays, correspondence, and manuscripts. Among the highlights of the collection are letters between the author and her sister, Liliana Rivera Garza. This rich archive offers scholars and students an unprecedented opportunity to engage with Rivera Garza’s creative process from conception to completion. Her literary contributions will undoubtedly continue to shape contemporary literature for generations to come.
Lauren Peña, PhD, is head of collection development at the Benson Latin American Collection.
In a celebration of literature, biodiversity, and Texas’ natural beauty, the Libraries hosted a literary salon in Houston on Monday, February 24, featuring acclaimed author and UT Austin professor David M. Hillis. The event, generously hosted by Tom and Reggie Nichols—former Libraries Advisory Council members and proud UT alumni—highlighted UT Libraries’ role in supporting critical research and advancing fundraising initiatives.
L-R: Tom and Reggie Nichols, Lorraine Haricombe, Claire Burrows.
The evening centered around Hillis’ latest book, Armadillos to Ziziphus: A Naturalist in the Texas Hill Country, a deeply personal and scientifically rich exploration of the Hill Country’s diverse landscapes. Guests received copies of the book and were treated to a special reading of the chapter The Last Wild River, in which Hillis wove together the history of the Lower Pecos River with his own experiences.
Vice Provost Lorraine Haricombe welcomed attendees and invited them to browse a curated selection of materials from the Life Science Library, showcasing works on Texas’ biodiversity and environmental history.
Hillis, who serves as director of the Biodiversity Center at UT Austin’s College of Natural Sciences, is renowned for his contributions to evolutionary biology. A MacArthur Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, he has discovered numerous species, including Austin’s iconic Barton Springs Salamander. His book reflects his lifelong passion for conservation, encapsulated in his belief:
“The more we understand and experience nature, the more of it we will appreciate, and the more we will seek to protect it for future generations to enjoy.”
The evening reinforced the Libraries’ commitment to fostering intellectual engagement while celebrating the invaluable research and scholarship at The University of Texas at Austin.
Hannah Neuhauser, 2025 PhD in Musicology, Butler School of Music
“Illuminating Explorations” – This series of digital exhibits is designed to promote and celebrate UT Libraries collections in small-scale form. The exhibits will highlight unique materials to elevate awareness of a broad range of content. “Illuminating Explorations” will be created and released over time, with the intent of encouraging use of featured and related items, both digital and analog, in support of new inquiries, discoveries, enjoyment and further exploration.
Music is a portal and can unlock a door to a fantastical sonic landscape, brimmed with mystic, melodic magic. We turn a page and open ourselves to discovering an entirely different realm, full of magic and mystery. Dangers may lurk around each corner, giants may want to gobble us up for lunch, and at times, the path may be so utterly twisted that we almost lose ourselves. Suddenly, the darkness becomes light, and in silence, we find ourselves back in the safety of our childhood bedrooms. The lion’s roar – a radiator. The pitter pattering of tiny Wild Things – the rain outside. Yet within a small, singular space, we traveled to another world and returned on the other side changed. In Throw the Book Away (2013), Anne Doughty remarks that regardless of how much a child reads, it is the experience of self-reliance and youthful agency that will ensure a protagonist’s survival in an unknown labyrinth. They must hear the warnings, read the signs, and act on their own.
This exhibit recreates these aural portals. However, instead of reading a book, we invite you to immerse yourself in the experience of children’s music. The Music and Childhood Culture Spotlight Exhibit seeks to inform scholars of the rich history of children’s music by highlighting hidden gems from the UT Austin library collections. Did you know A.A. Milne commissioned his own songbook for Winnie the Pooh in 1929? Or that Carole King wrote a children’s television special called Really Rosie in 1975? It was a huge hit and we have the score, which you can check out to sing to your younger friends! Selections also range from audio recordings like Danny Kaye’s narration of Tubby the Tuba (1947) to Oliver Knussen’s operatic score of Where the Wild Things Are (1982) and a wealth of interdisciplinary scholarship from Mozart’s influence on childhood labor (Mueller) to the rise of Young People’s Records (Bonner).
Music is a psychological tool to study emotional regulation “without rules or limitations, it is pure assimilation” and media can stimulate fantasy for children to pretend “as if” they are something else (Gotz et, all, 2005 p.13). Numerous scholars discuss the sentimentality and destruction of child development due to media dependency, but children will always make their own ideas of media to understand, transgress, rebel, and connect with their surroundings (Parry, 2013). Here, in this exhibit, we seek to highlight the positive attributes of musical media that allow children (and our inner child) to enact their own creative cultures through their imaginations and identify the “traces” of media that we value.
I hope you enjoy these discoveries as much as I did.
Works Cited
Doughty, Amie A. Throw the Book Away: Reading versus Experience in Children’s Fantasy. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2013.
Gotz, Maya, Dafna Lemish, Hyesung Moon, and Amy Aidman. Media and the Make-Believe Worlds of Children. Routledge, 2005.
Parry, Becky. Children, Film, and Literacy. London: Palgave Macmillan, 2013.
The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is thrilled to announce the acquisition of the archives of César Vallejo and Augusto Roa Bastos, two giants of Latin American letters. These archives augment the Benson’s already significant collection of materials that represent the region’s writers, thinkers, and intellectual leaders, making the library, and the UT campus, aninvaluable resource for students, faculty, researchers from all corners of the globe.
By ADELA PINEDA FRANCO
Peruvian poet César Vallejo (1892–1938) is considered one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century Latin American literature. Born in the Andean city of Santiago de Chuco, he moved to Lima as a young university student, producing there his first collection of poems, Los heraldos negros (1919). Seeking wider cultural and intellectual opportunities, Vallejo left Peru for Europe in 1923, spending most of his remaining fifteen years in self-imposed, impoverished exile in France, with periods in Spain and two trips to Russia. He died in Paris in 1938 at the age of 46.
César Vallejo, undated. Benson Latin American Collection.
Vallejo’s poetry has no precedent in the history of modern poetry. Written during a period that witnessed the crude consequences of war, imprisonment, and displacement (1919–1922), his avant-garde masterwork, Trilce (1922), challenges the reader with compelling paradoxes, abrupt syntactical turns, irregular spellings, rarefied lexicon, and verses arranged in unfamiliar visual displays.
However, this experimental register goes beyond the drive toward the new that was characteristic of the avant-garde movements. Vallejo’s poetic language is also a consequence of his search for the stark concrete expression of human affect. This is why in Trilce abstract notions of time, space, and being are conflated with raw emotions. No other poet has given shape to the silence that sustains the remembrance of things past with such precision:
Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel, cuidado con ir por ahí, por donde acaban de pasar gangueando sus memorias dobladoras penas, hacia el silencioso corral, y por donde las gallinas que se están acostando todavía, se han espantado tanto. Mejor estemos aquí no más. Madre dijo que no demoraría.
César Vallejo in Fountainebleu, France, 1926. Courtesy Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection.
On the other hand, Vallejo’s poems embody the collective rather than the egotistical self. Familiar references are always a window into the vulnerability of human nature and the resilience of collective struggle, both in his homeland of Peru and in the entire world. A poem on the death of a soldier in the Spanish Civil War reads:
Pedro también solía comer entre las criaturas de su carne, asear, pintar la mesa y vivir dulcemente en representación de todo el mundo. Y esta cuchara anduvo en su chaqueta, despierto o bien cuando dormía, siempre, cuchara muerta viva, ella y sus símbolos. ¡Abisa a todos compañeros pronto! ¡Viban los compañeros al pie de esta cuchara para siempre!
“Solía escribir con su dedo grande en el aire,” España, aparta de mí este cáliz,1939
Vallejo’s oeuvre is thus an affective journey through the troublesome history of the twentieth century. Evidence of this is his posthumous poetry, which pertains to his last years in Europe: Poemas humanos (Human Poems), grouped under this title by his widow Georgette María Philippart Travers in 1937; and España, aparta de mí este cáliz (Spain, Take This Cup from Me,1939), his testament of the Spanish Civil War. Both collections are a centerpiece of the Benson’s recent acquisition.
“Poemas humanos” manuscript, César Vallejo Papers. Courtesy Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection.
Beyond the recurring debate as to whether Human Poems is an appropriate title for this posthumous corpus, it is certain that these poems are an honest and critical reflection on the role of the lettered poet in a world charged with misery and human suffering:
Un albañil cae de un techo, muere y ya no almuerza ¿Innovar, luego, el tropo, la metáfora?
“Un hombre pasa con un pan al hombro,” Poemas humanos, 1937
Vallejo’s poems will always be contemporary, as they shed light on the devastating consequences of societal fragmentation, displacement, and exile. At the same time, his poems remind us of the need to keep longing for human empathy and love, even in times of war. We celebrate the arrival of Vallejo’s papers.
Al fin de la batalla, y muerto el combatiente, vino hacia él un hombre y le dijo: “No mueras, te amo tanto!” Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo.
Se le acercaron dos y repitiéronle: “No nos dejes! ¡Valor! ¡Vuelve a la vida!” Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo.
Acudieron a él veinte, cien, mil, quinientos mil, clamando: “Tanto amor, y no poder nada contra la muerte!” Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo.
Le rodearon millones de individuos, con un ruego común: “¡Quédate, hermano!” Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo.
Entonces, todos los hombres de la tierra le rodearon; les vio el cadáver triste, emocionado; incorporóse lentamente, abrazó al primer hombre; echóse a andar . . .
“Masa,” Poemas humanos, 1939
The César Vallejo Papers consist of materials dated from 1918 to 1992, and include manuscripts, drafts, correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, and some published copies of his written work.
This acquisition was funded in part by the Janet and Jack Roberts Peruvian Endowment.
Adela Pineda Franco is Lozano Long Endowed Professor in Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies, and director of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) at The University of Texas at Austin. Biographical research on César Vallejo was contributed by Benson Exhibitions Curator Veronica Valarino.
Meagan O’Neal, Graduate Student in Library Science from the University of North Texas
The Association for Cultural Equity features a project called The Global Jukebox. Building off the research of musicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax (1915-2002), The Global Jukebox is a database of traditional folk, indigenous, and popular songs from cultures around the world. The folk and indigenous music samples were recorded on site between 1900-1980 by researchers committed to expanding musical documentation and preservation. With over 6000 songs from 1200 different cultures, this project is intended for anyone to use to understand the working of a community by listening to its music. The project is open access and free without an account, however setting up a free account allows you to save your research on musical roots and provide feedback.
Screenshot of The Global Jukebox main page.
There is something for everyone to enjoy in this project. For the curious, there is “Explore” mode, where you can drag a 3-D globe around to discover music from anywhere in the world. Clicking on any dot on the globe, listeners can be instantly transported to a playlist of that area’s music and song. There is also an option to use preset “Journeys,” which allows listeners to discover music by theme.
The “Learn” mode is an interesting tool for K-12 educators, offering lesson plans and thematic units that help to diversify the music curriculum. There is also an option to “find your musical roots” and build a playlist of your own family’s musical heritage. This tool is a great opportunity to connect students to their cultural backgrounds through music.
Screenshot of cultural ”nodes” that can be found while in ”Explore” mode.
What I found the most interesting is cantometrics. Cantometrics is the analysis of patterns in music. The Global Jukebox is a relational database, and each song has datasets marking characteristics like instrumentation; phonating and phrasing; melodic form; and many more. These data points highlight connections across regions, with visual clusters showing relational patterns.
Screenshot of Education landing page.
I found this especially interesting because it is similar to how university music students are trained to compare characteristics in different eras of music. The Global Jukebox strives to provide a picture of characteristics from around the world, yet many cultures have only a handful of music samples to listen to, and there are some dots on the globe that do not have any associated content. This is an ongoing project, and I would like to see more samples added. A few songs from an area can’t accurately represent the entire cultural context for that people, let alone for an entire geographic region, and expanding their selections will help improve overall representation.
Screenshot of cultural clusters by song styles.
In the “Analyze” section it shows their coding for any culture and song in the jukebox, and when you click on the inext to the song tracker you have the option to see the coding sheet for any song in their database. The 37 musical features were selected during months of listening of recordings of music from across the world and then standardized with assigned ranges so their variations could be coded. Their coding guide goes into more detail about each line. While there are legitimate critiques in the field of musicology about the cantometric coding, it is still an interesting lens for viewing music.
Screenshot of the cantometrics dataset for Drums For Girl’s Dances.
As a former music undergraduate student, I would have loved to have had a resource like this available to expand my knowledge beyond the classical canon. I highly recommend musicologists, educators, and the casually curious to make use of this database. This is a great tool to use with other resources to achieve a more equitable balance of music from around the world.
Want to learn more about world music and cantometrics? Check out these resources from the UT Libraries:
As students made their way back to campus for the fall 2024 semester, the University of Texas Libraries put together a fun and engaging lineup of events as part of Longhorn Welcome. The Libraries’ Welcome Week was all about giving new and returning students a chance to meet new people, get creative, and discover everything the Libraries have to offer.
Things kicked off on Monday, August 26, with the “Color and Geometry in Islamic Art” event at The Foundry in the Fine Arts Library. Students got hands-on with geometric patterns and the math behind Islamic art, working with 3D models and crafting their own intricate designs, some even taking time to make Arabic jewelry. With about 35 attendees from different departments, everyone got the chance to be creative and learn more about The Foundry’s resources for future projects.
Tuesday, August 27, brought the Zine Making Party, which transformed the Fine Arts Library into a buzzing creative space. Over 60 students, faculty, and staff dove into the zine collection, scissors and glue sticks in hand, and created their own zine pages. It was a DIY vibe all around, with people blending personal creativity and ideas with inspiration from the Libraries’ growing collection of zines.
On Wednesday, August 28, nearly 100 people gathered for “Stepping into Fall: A Celebration of Indian Dance and Music.” The night featured amazing performances from student groups like Texas Taraana, Gandharva, Sindhu Vasudevan, and Fusion Bollywood. From live Hindustani music to Bollywood fusion choreography, the audience got to experience an exciting mix of traditional and contemporary Indian art forms. The event was cosponsored by the South Asia Institute and SPIC MACAY, giving attendees a chance to learn more about these student groups and how to get involved.
Thursday, August 29, the UFCU Room in PCL was transformed into a Bibliogarden—a relaxed space where students could explore all kinds of cool books, graphic novels, zines, maps, and more from the Libraries’ collections. Around 40 attendees wandered through the offerings, checking out everything from rare books to fun reading materials that Libraries staff recommended. The variety of formats and languages sparked curiosity, and many left inspired to dive deeper into the Libraries’ collections and maybe even learn a new language or two.
To wrap up the week on Friday, August 30, the Libraries teamed up with the Center for Asian American Studies to screen Everything, Everywhere All at Once (2022) at the PCL. About 100 people showed up to enjoy the sci-fi adventure, which had everyone laughing and tearing up at different moments. The screening wasn’t just a movie night—it was also a chance to enjoy some great food from Tso Chinese, highlighting how partnerships can bring cultural events to campus in a big way.
All in all, the UT Libraries’ week of events brought students and faculty together, sparking creativity and offering a fun way to connect with the resources and communities on campus. It was a perfect way to kick off Longhorn Welcome 2024, and everyone walked away feeling a little more inspired.
A new exhibition at the Benson Latin American Collection highlightsthe cultural production of the region’s avant-gardeartists and thinkers
By Veronica Valarino
The early decades of the 20th century in major Latin American cities saw the explosion of publications and writers in a movement fueled by a growing access to publishing and an increasingly educated readership. The movement, known as vanguardismo, produced some of the region’s most celebrated writers, and reflected the dynamism and complexity of contemporary reality. These vanguardists embraced avant-garde techniques, experimental forms, and bold thematic explorations, capturing the turbulence of a rapidly changing society.
Magazine covers from Revista de Antropofagia (Cannabalism Magazine) and Klaxon, a monthly modern art magazine. Both were published in São Paulo.
Brazilian poet Mário de Andrade, exhibition board and poem excerpt
The term vanguardism originates from the military concept of the vanguard, which refers to soldiers at the forefront of a formation. In the context of the arts, avant-garde, or vanguardia, denotes innovative and provocative artistic and literary movements that emerged in Europe and the Americas during the 1920s and 1930s. These movements arose amidst a tumultuous era marked by significant events such as World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, and the Spanish Civil War. The combination of societal dissatisfaction, technological advancements, and political upheaval prompted reflections on the contemporary crisis and an uncertain future. Avant-garde artists, or vanguardistas, distinguished themselves by their pursuit of innovation and experimentation, deliberately breaking away from established artistic traditions.
Top: Peruvian poet Magda Portal; below: cover of the Peruvian journal Amauta
Amauta January 1928 issue, Lima, Peru. The issue contains an article by the magazine’s founder, José Carlos Mariátegui, a leading voice in the country’s avant-garde movement and an outspoken Marxist.
Latin American vanguardismo, characterized by its unified yet distinct cultural development, arose almost simultaneously in major cities across the region, like Havana, Lima, Mexico City, Montevideo, Santiago, São Paulo, and, especially, Buenos Aires. Vanguardists’ intellectual, artistic, and political debates were documented in numerous periodicals and magazines, which also provided a platform for vanguardist manifestos. These publications articulated expansive poetic visions, engaged in political activism, and advocated for social and political change.
Exhibition panel about Cuban vanguardists Alejo Carpentier and Nicolás Guillén
Latin American vanguardismo is a significant cultural movement that gave voice to a relatively unified and distinctly Latin American art. It is also part of a larger, international movement. Hence, Latin American vanguardismo should not be seen as a mere reproduction of the European avant-garde. It was a continent-wide development, simultaneously international and autochthonous in its orientation as it grew out of and responded to the continent’s own cultural and social concerns.
Magazine cover of Revista de Avance, 1930. The magazine was published in Havana, Cuba, between 1927 and 1930.
The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection has steadily expanded its archival materials and rare books related to the cultural history of Latin America over the years. Recent additions, such as the collections of César Vallejo, Magda Portal, and Pablo Antonio Cuadra, have significantly enhanced the collection, making it an invaluable resource for research. This exhibition delves into a pivotal historical moment shaped by visionary literary luminaries. By exploring their poetic works, magazines, and manifestos, we celebrate these influential figures.
Poems, Magazines & Manifestos is on view in the Ann Hartness Reading Room at the Benson Latin American Collection (SRH 1), 2300 Red River Street, during summer and fall 2024.
Library hours: Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm. Closed July 4 and Sept. 2.
This exhibition was developed by Veronica Valarino, Benson Exhibition Curator.
