Research Expertise and Interest
colonial period in México, internal colonialism in Mexico, Jesuits (Loyola, Acosta, Baegert), Baroque and Enlightenment from a colonial perspective, technology and environment, drainage of Mexico City lakes, Christianity and Pre-Hispanic religions.
Research Description
Ivonne del Valle is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She is currently working on two projects: The first one has to do with the long process of the drainage of the lakes of Mexico City starting in 1607 and finished during the Porfiriato or—depending on the sources and the perspective—unfinished until now. She is interested in analyzing the relationships among technology, religion, culture, and government articulated by the Mexicas, the Spanish empire, and the Mexican nation as seen in their handling of the climatic and hydrographic situation of Mexico City’s location.
In the second project, she is studying the role of the colonization of America from the 15th century onward in the development of new epistemologies and political theories. She wants to explore the ways in which first, the unprecedented violence of conquest and colonization, and secondly, the need for a correct administration of the colonies, brought about important theoretical, technological, and epistemological changes which may have been conceived to be practiced in the colonies, but which in the long run transformed the way Europe understood and fashioned itself.
Recent publications:
“Loyola’s God and Descartes’s Method. The Role of the Spiritual Exercises in Modernity and Secularization.” Philosophy and Theology 34: 1 and 2 (2022): 3–28.
“Pantitlán or Desagüe: Technology and Secularization in Colonial Mexico City.” Mabel Moraña, Ed. Hydrocriticism and Colonialism in Latin America. Water Marks. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022. 145-165.
“Políticas nacionales en negativo: Sobre el uso industrial del agua en México.” La Noria Digital. Número 0 (Sept. 2022). Publicación electrónica mensual del Programa Nacional Estratégico del Agua (Pronaces Agua). Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Conacyt). p. 16-23.
“El conjunto de lo que (no) se ve y el horizonte de lucha del estado.” Revista Tlatelolco. Democracia democratizante y cambio social. Web. Sept. 23, 2022.
“Playing with Fire: Mestizaje Run Amok.” Josefina Saldaña and Simón Ventura, Eds. Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. 46.2 (Fall 2021): 197 – 210.
Ivonne del Valle, Anna More, Rachel O’Toole, Ed. Iberian Empires and the Roots of Globalization. Minnesota: Hispanic Issues-Vanderbilt U P, 2020.
(With Anna More and Rachel O’Toole) “Introduction: Iberian Empires and a Theory of Early Modern Globalization.” Ivonne del Valle, Anna More and Rachel O’Toole, Ed. Iberian Empires and the Roots of Globalization. Minnesota: Hispanic Issues -Vanderbilt U P, 2020. 1 – 21. Print.
“A New Moses: Vasco de Quiroga’s Hospitals and the Transformation of “Indians” from “Bárbaros” to “Pobres.” Ivonne del Valle, Anna More and Rachel O’Toole, Ed. Iberian Empires and the Roots of Globalization. Minnesota: Hispanic Issues-Vanderbilt U P, 2020. 47-73. Print.
“Theoretical Constructs: Edmundo and Juan O'Gorman, Indigenous Populations and the Colonial Question.” Abraham Acosta, Ed. Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies 6.1 (Spring 2018): 17-38. Print
“Moving across Disciplines: Context, Theory and Colonial Sources.” Karen Melvin and Sylvia Sellers-García, Ed. Imagining Histories of Colonial Latin America. Synoptic Methods and Practices. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017. 63-78. Print.
Co-editor, with Pedro Palou, Cardenismo: auge y caída de un legado político y social. Boston: Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, 2017. Print.
“Del mito al proyecto de nación: lucha de clases y un cardenismo más allá de Cárdenas” (With Pedro Palou). Cardenismo: auge y caída de un legado político y social. Boston: Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, 2017. 9 – 29. Print.
“Loa to El divino Narciso: the Perils of Critiquing the Conquest.” Emily Bergmann and Stacey Schlau, Ed. Research Companion to the Works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. New York: Routledge, 2017. 214-226. Print.
“Jesuit Enlightenment: Interventions in Christianity and Intellectualism.” Anna Nogar, José Ramón Ruisánchez and Ignacio Sánchez-Prado (ed.) A History of Mexican Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2016. 81 – 96. Print.
"Mexico’s Re-colonization: Unrestrained Violence, Rule of Law and the Creation of a New Order." Ivonne del Valle, Estelle Tarica (ed.) Política común 7 (2015). Web.
Radical Politics and/or Rule of Law in Mexico. Ivonne del Valle, Estelle Tarica (ed.) Política común 7 (2015). Web.
Carl Schmitt and the Early Modern World. Ivonne del Valle, John D. Blanco (ed.) Política común Special Issue 5 (2014). Web.
“Reorienting Schmitt’s Nomos: Political Theology, and Colonial (and Other) Exceptions in the Creation of Modern and Global Worlds” (With John D. Blanco).
“José de Acosta: Colonial Regimes for a Globalized Christian World.” Santa Arias and Raúl Marrero Fente (ed.) Coloniality, Religion and the Law in the Early Iberian World. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. 2014. 3 – 26. Print.
“From José de Acosta to the Enlightenment: Barbarians, Climate Change and (Colonial) Technology as the End of History.” Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 54.4 (2013): 435-459. Print.
“José de Acosta, Violence and Rhetoric: the Emergence of Colonial Baroque.” Crystal Chemris (ed.) Calíope: Transatlantic Baroque 18.2 (2013): 46 – 72. Print.
“Grandeza mexicana and the Lakes of Mexico City: Economy and Ontology in Colonial Technological Development. ”Ana Maria Mutis and Elizabeth Pettinaroli (ed.) Troubled Waters. Rivers in Latin American Imagination. Vanderbilt UP- Hispanic Issues Online 12 (Spring 2013): 38 – 54.
https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/184424
Escribiendo desde los márgenes: colonialismo y jesuitas en el siglo XVIII. México: Siglo XXI Editores, 2009. Print.