INTRODUCTION
Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and current resident of Los Angeles, California, Pablo Baler is a novelist, art critic, and scholar. A graduate of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Stanford University and U. C. Berkeley, Baler is Full Professor of Latin-American Literature. Pablo Baler is the author of the award winning novel Circa (Ed. Galerna, 1999), Chabrancán (Ediciones del Camino, 2020), El lejano desoriente (Rialta, 2022), and widely translated short stories. He is also the author of Los Sentidos de la distorsión: fantasias epistemológicas del neobarroco latinoamericano (Ed. Corregidor, 2009), a highly praised essay on neobaroque aesthetics also published in English by Palgrave McMillan (2016). In addition, Baler is the editor of and contributor to The Next Thing: Art in the Twenty-First Century (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013), a collection of essays written by a broad range of authors about the aesthetic sensibility that will define our times. Baler’s latest collection of short stories, La burocracia mandarina, was published by Lumme Editor in San Paulo, Brazil (2013) and re-published for its 10 year annniversary by Ediciones del Camino in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Baler is currently working on an essay on the general interdisciplinary field of ethics and aesthetics titled By Any Stretch of the Imagination. Baler is also an international research fellow at The Center for Fine Art Research at Birmingham City, University, U.K.
TEACHING INTERESTS
Literary Theory, Aesthetics, Literature and Philosophy, The Avant-garde, 20th and 21st century Latin-American short story, History of the Spanish American novel, Creative writing and Creative reading, Spanish Journalism, Visual and Cultural criticism, Baroque and Neo-baroque aesthetics.
RESEARCH
Pablo Baler’s research focuses on 20th century Latin American literature and visual culture with a strong emphasis on theoretical issues pertaining to philosophy, aesthetics, and the history of ideas. Baler’s doctoral dissertation, later published as Los sentidos de la distorsión: fantasías epistemológicas del neobarroco latinoamericano (Senses of Distortion: Epistemological Fantasies of the Neo-Baroque - 2009 Ed. Corregidor), explores the ruptures and continuities linking the decentered dynamics of the 17th century (Quevedo, Góngora, Bernini) to the logic of instability that permeates 20th century visual and literary production in Latin America (Huidobro, Borges, Sarduy).
Los sentidos de la distorsión corresponds to a broader interest in the origins and implications of representational crises. In that sense, Baler’s current research further inquires into a wide range of aesthetic problems and solutions brought about by the shattering experience of violence (war, torture, terrorism, martyrdom) as reflected in theatre, cinema, and the visual arts in the context of the Americas of the 20th and 21st century.
Connected to this interest in the dynamics of representational crises and artistic revolutions, Baler is exploring and assessing the scope of current trends in the art world. As part of this project focused on art criticism, history of ideas, and cultural theory, Baler has edited a collection of essays written by a broad range of authors that offers different perspectives and insights into the aesthetic sensibility that is starting to define the 21st century. This book, entitled: The Next Thing: Art in the 21st Century is a collection of contestable "prophecies" about the sensibility that will define our time.