Shelf Conscious: Ernesto Capello

Ever wonder about all those books lining professors’ offices? We’re with you.

Professor Ernesto Capello’s Latin American history courses emphasize the intersections of local and global identity, racial difference and power, and the relationships among arts, politics, and the state.

Any standout books you’ve read recently?

En el espejo haitiano. Los indios del Bajío y el colapso del orden colonial en América Latina, by Mexican historian Luis Fernando Granados, rethinks the Mexican War of Independence from the perspective of Indigenous communities in the wake of its 2010 bicentennial. It’s a fascinating way of thinking about the past through the lens of the present while also trying to center Indigenous peoples’ experiences within a cosmopolitan worldview.

What’s one of your all-time favorite reads?

Every five years or so, I read Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. It’s a masterful, brilliant piece of work—like what The Da Vinci Code wanted to be but couldn’t. It’s also inspirational for my latest book project about representations of the Andean equator within geographic science and visual culture since the eighteenth century. I’m pretty convinced I’m actually trying to write a decolonial version of Foucault’s Pendulum. And failing.

What book is crucial to understanding your academic niche?

I study the cultural history of Latin America from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries and am interested in the interplay between local processes, identities, geographies, and global ideas of belonging. Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation and Julio Ramos’s Desencuentros de la modernidad en América Latina: literatura y política en el siglo XIX both have that interplay surrounding questions around travel.

Any guilty-pleasure reads?

I really enjoy mysteries. Years ago, I inherited fifty Agatha Christies, and during the pandemic, my partner and I have been reading them out loud, which has been a fun project. I also recently read a fabulous new translation of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.

What book would you recommend to everybody at Macalester?

The Swallow and the Tom Cat: A Love Story, by the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado. It’s kind of hard to find, but worth it. It’s a fable about a doomed love story between a swallow and a tomcat and contains some beautifully evocative musings on what love is about and how it can transform an individual.