Prefiguring the Nation: Monument Tombs and Family Vaults as a Nascent Community of Belonging in La Recoleta Cemetery, 1822 -1910
Supervisor: Dr. Pia Gottschaller
Secondary Supervisor: Dr. Kyle Leyden
My research focuses on La Recoleta cemetery, the oldest and most established in Buenos Aires, from its founding in 1822 to Argentina’s watershed centennial in 1910, a turbulent period of national consolidation.Ìý I examine it as a social site in which the criollo ruling class made use of funerary iconography to represent pedagogically its evolving practices of civility and association as models for a still embryonic nation.Ìý A commemorative spirit spills from monument tombs of prominent figures to more private memorials of aspirational families expressing faith in a common future.Ìý My thesis examines also the cemetery as a realm of collective memory and a case study on the visual vagaries of how it is formed.
Research Interests
- Commemorative sculpture and public monuments
- Processes of national identity formation
- Visual representations of collective memory
Education
2025 – present: Â鶹TVÍøÕ¾ of Art, PhD student
2022 – 2024: University of Cambridge, Latin American Studies (by thesis only), MPhil
1989 – 1992: Harvard Law School, JD
1987 – 1989: University of Cambridge, Modern and Medieval Languages, BA, MA
1983 – 1987: Harvard College, English and American Literature, AB.