“Imaginaries of Desertion: Settler Heterotopias in The Adventures of China Iron”
Faculty Fridays
Center for Latin American Studies, University of Utah
Title: “Imaginaries of Desertion: Settler Heterotopias in The Adventures of China Iron”
Maria Laura Martinelli (Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish)
This talk examines how contemporary fiction revisits and reworks colonial spatial imaginaries in the Southern Cone of Latin America. I focus on The Adventures of China Iron (2017) by award-winning author Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, a story that reimagines the nineteenth-century Argentine poem Martín Fierro from the perspective of his unnamed wife, “La China.” I explore how the novel envisions desertion—moving tierra adentro, into the “desert,” or “Indian Territory”—as a gesture of radical freedom. Set in Mapuche territories east of the Andes, this fictional, heterotopic space unravels the sexual and gendered dynamics of settler colonies while portraying the frontier landscape as emptied of history and politics, both challenging and echoing settler colonial logics.
Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Friday, April 3, 2026, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM.
Faculty Friday Work in Progress - Maria Laura Martinelli
Title coming soon!
Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Friday, April 3, 2026, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM.
Subversive Genes: Innovation, Appropriation, and Genetics Transformed in Latin America
Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Friday, April 10, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Theorizing Translation in Latin America
Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Friday, April 24, 2026, 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM.
Memorial Day
University Observed Holidays
Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Monday, May 25, 2026.