Alejandra Laera Appointed Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University
Alejandra Laera, Full Professor of Argentine Literature at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, will serve as the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University during the Fall 2025 semester. Hosted by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Dr. Laera will teach a course on the Literature of the Southern Cone.
The Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professorship was established in 1986 and is awarded to distinguished academics from Latin America. Although it is open to all fields of knowledge, the position has historically been held by scholars in the social sciences and humanities. Each year, only a select group—typically two or three individuals from across the region—are invited to hold this prestigious appointment, underscoring the significance of Dr. Laera’s selection.
Dr. Alejandra Laera’s career
Dr. Laera is Full Professor of Argentine Literature at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, where she also serves as the appointed Director of the Instituto de Literatura Argentina “Ricardo Rojas.” She is a Principal Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and Director of the Master’s Program in Narrative Journalism at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín. She has taught courses and delivered lectures at universities in Argentina and abroad, including Stanford University, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Rio de Janeiro, the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, and Wesleyan University.
Her publications include scholarly books such as El tiempo vacío de la ficción. Novelas argentinas de Eduardo Gutiérrez y Eugenio Cambaceres (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004), Ficciones del dinero. Argentina 1890–2001 (FCE, 2014), the literature and art anthology Una historia de la imaginación en la Argentina (Museo de Arte Moderno, 2019), Húmeda, susurrada, afectiva, creativa (Universidad Nacional del Litoral, 2022), and most recently ¿Para qué sirve leer novelas? Narrativas del presente y capitalismo (FCE, 2024). She co-edited A History of Argentine Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and has contributed to leading reference works such as Latin American Literature in Transition (1870–1930), The Routledge Companion to 20th and 21st Century Latin American Literary and Cultural Forms, and Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought: Historical and Institutional Trajectories.
In addition to her academic work, Dr. Laera is the series editor of Viajeras/Viajeros for Fondo de Cultura Económica and Editor-in-Chief of Revista Crítica de Literatura Argentina. El Matadero, based at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires.