Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante
Associate Professor — PhD, Cornell University
C.B. Smith, Sr. Centennial Chair in United States-Mexico Relations #3 Associate Professor; Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) at UT; Advisory Council of the LGBTQ Studies Program at UT

Contact
- E-mail: carcamohuechante@austin.utexas.edu
- Office: BEN 3.146 (Spanish and Portuguese); SAC 4.132 (NAIS)
- Office Hours: Fall 2019: Tuesdays, 11:00 AM – 12:30 AM, BEN 3.146; Thursdays, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM, SAC 4.132
Interests
Sound studies, radio, and media ecologies; colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy; decolonizing methodologies; Indigenous aesthetics and politics; Native territories and diasporas; the Mapuche movement and Abiayala. Race, gender & sexuality. Neoliberalism, literature, and market culture. Human rights,, social justice, and the arts. Poetry, urban chronicle and fiction, with emphasis in the Andes and Southern Cone of Latin America
Biography
Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante is a scholar of Mapuche origin who grew up in Tralcao, a rural village in the River Region of Valdivia in southern Chile. He studied Philosophy and Social Sciences at the Universidad Austral de Chile (1980-1985), obtained his MA at the University of Oregon (1995-1997), and earned his PhD in Hispanic Studies at Cornell (1997-2001). He taught at Harvard University between 2001 and 2009. Since 2009, he teaches Latin American and indigenous literatures, media and cultures at The University of Texas at Austin. He is a founding member of the Comunidad de Historia Mapuche (CHM), which is a collective of indigenous, Mapuche researchers based in Temuco, southern Chile. Through the CHM, he has recently co-edited the collections of essays on colonial violence, entitled Awükan ka kütrankan zugu Wajmapu meu: Violencias coloniales en Wajmapu (Ediciones Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, 2015); and also Ta iñ fijke xipa rakizuameluwün. Historia, colonialismo y resistencia desde el país Mapuche (Ediciones de Historia Mapuche, 2012), the first book of this Mapuche collective, and which brings together fourteen Mapuche authors who examine many dimensions of Mapuche history, relying upon the concept of colonialism as the axis of debate and reflection on historical, political, cultural and territorial issues. Previously, in 2007, Professor Cárcamo-Huechante published his own book, Tramas del mercado: imaginación económica, cultura pública y literatura en el Chile de fines del siglo veinte (Santiago: Editorial Cuarto Propio), and co-edited a volume of essays entitled El valor de la cultura: arte, literatura y mercado en América Latina (with Alvaro Fernández-Bravo and Alejandra Laera, Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2007). He has published articles in prestigious academic journals. He is also a member of the editorial boards of refereed journals in the United States and in Latin America, such as: Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, Latin American Literary Review, Chasqui, and Taller de Letras. He is currently a member of the Council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). In August 2012, Professor Cárcamo-Huechante won the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award, the University of Texas System Board of Regents's highest teaching honor. During the 2013-2014 academic year, he was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. For more informaton on Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, see: https://www.comunidadhistoriamapuche.cl; for the Program in Native American and Indigenous Studies at UT, go to, http://liberalarts.utexas.edu/nais/.
Courses
SPC 320C • Indigenous Matters
45835 • Fall 2022
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM BEN 1.126
GC
SPN 356D • Indigenous Resurgence
45039 • Spring 2022
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SZB 2.222
ILA 387 • De-Colonizing Arts And Acts
45160 • Fall 2021
Meets TH 5:00PM-8:00PM BEN 1.102
(also listed as LAS 381)
SPC 320C • Indigenous Matters-Wb
45910 • Spring 2021
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM
Internet; Synchronous
GC
SPN 355 • From El Che To Evita
44745 • Spring 2020
Meets MWF 2:00PM-3:00PM BEN 1.122
GC
(also listed as LAS 370S)
SPN 355 • Environmental Engagements
44500 • Fall 2019
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM BEN 1.124
GC
(also listed as LAS 370S)
ILA 387 • Colonialism/Indigen Response
44600 • Spring 2019
Meets W 9:00AM-12:00PM SZB 434
(also listed as LAS 381)
SPN 356 • Indigenous Resurgence
45750 • Fall 2018
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM BEN 1.108
EGC
(also listed as LAS 370S)
SPN 355 • From El Che To Evita
45985 • Spring 2018
Meets TTH 8:00AM-9:30AM BEN 1.126
GC
ILA 389 • Territories:colonial/Anti
45770 • Fall 2017
Meets TH 5:00PM-8:00PM CAL 21
(also listed as LAS 381)
SPN 356 • Indigenous Resurgence
46505 • Fall 2016
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM BEN 1.104
EGC
(also listed as LAS 370S)
SPN 355 • From El Che To Evita
45640 • Spring 2016
Meets MWF 11:00AM-12:00PM GEA 114
GC
(also listed as LAS 370S)
ILA 387 • Lit And Cult Life Of Radio
44935 • Fall 2015
Meets T 5:00PM-8:00PM BEN 1.106
(also listed as LAS 392S)
SPN 355 • Poetry For The 21st Century
46160 • Spring 2015
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM MEZ 2.102
GC
(also listed as LAS 370S)
ILA 380 • Intro To Lit And Cult Theory
46570 • Fall 2014
Meets W 5:00PM-8:00PM BEN 2.104
SPN 393T • Research Meths/Professionalztn
46985 • Spring 2013
Meets W 3:00PM-6:00PM BEN 1.118
SPN 380K • Sound Cultures In Latin Amer
46685 • Fall 2012
Meets W 9:30AM-12:30PM CAL 21
SPN 322K • Civilization Of Spanish Amer
46375-46400 • Spring 2012
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM UTC 3.132
GC
(also listed as LAS 370S)
SPN 352 • Lit Figuratns In Multimed Age
46580 • Spring 2012
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM MEZ 1.212
GC
(also listed as LAS 370S)
SPN 350 • The Imagined Andes
46490 • Fall 2011
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM MEZ 2.122
(also listed as LAS 370S)
SPN 380K • Indig Worlds Andes/Sthrn Cone
46575 • Fall 2011
Meets T 1:00PM-4:00PM BEN 1.118
(also listed as LAS 392S)
SPN 380K • Aesthetics And Polit Of Voices
47255 • Spring 2011
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM BEN 1.118
(also listed as LAS 392S)
UGS 303 • The Art Of Human Rights
64110-64120 • Spring 2011
Meets MW 10:00AM-11:00AM PAR 201
SPN 325K • Intro To Spn Am Lit Thru Mod
47630 • Spring 2010
Meets MWF 10:00AM-11:00AM MEZ 1.210
GC
LAS 370S • Poetics & Fictions From Chile
40910 • Fall 2009
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM MEZ 1.216
SPN 350 • Indigenous Voices
48162 • Fall 2009
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM CAL 419
Current Research
Current Research
Currently I am working on my new book, tentatively entitled Acoustic Colonialism, Mapuche Interferences. This book in progress documents and analyzes indigenous Mapuche responses of language and sound to colonialism in contemporary neoliberal Chile from the late 1980s to the present. I frame the work of Mapuche writers, artists, and media activists in Chile as forms of interferences to what I call “acoustic colonialism”—a concept that I have coined to define a regime of invasive, massive, and historically continuous deployment of linguistic, environmental, and technological sonic occupation by Chilean, non-indigenous colonizing forces upon the Mapuche territory (Wallmapu). In a novel way, Acoustic Colonialism, Mapuche Interferences brings together approaches from Indigenous Studies and Sound Studies, drawing on Mapuche concepts of language, sound, and territory.
In my study, I envision sound as a field of power struggles between colonizing and decolonizing forces. In the context of a long colonial history in Chile, which includes almost three centuries of Spanish occupation and the post-1800 settlement of the Chilean nation-state on native territories, Mapuche cultural producers have elaborated creative responses using language, art, and media. Through poetic, literary, sonic and aural performances, Mapuche writers, artists and media activists stage indigenous uses of a variety of non-indigenous media—from writing to radio—to perform genres, forms and meaning rooted in ancestral traditions, as well as the new experiences of the Mapuche within the current era of globalized neoliberalism.