Marcelo Pellegrini

Spring 2026 Office Hours

Mondays 10:00am-noon (in-person)

Biography

Marcelo Pellegrini’s research focuses on poetry and poetics as privileged sites for thinking about the history of ideas in Latin America, with particular attention to how poetic form both reflects and produces intellectual debates. He also has a keen interest in the theory and the practice of translation, which he considers a critical tool that reshapes literary and philosophical concepts across languages and traditions. At the intersection of poetry and philosophy, his work examines how poetic language tests the limits of conceptual thought, generating forms of knowledge that emerge precisely from tension, opacity, and formal experimentation.

Marcelo’s teaching covers a range of other topics that are dear to his heart. He teaches graduate seminars and undergraduate courses that include essays, novels, and short stories, approaching them as forms that invite close attention to language, argument, and narrative experimentation. Marcelo also teaches two undergraduate courses – one in Spanish and the other in English – on soccer as a site of national identity and cultural politics, where literature, history, and mass culture intersect. These courses allow students to engage across linguistic contexts while exploring how the game becomes a powerful medium for thinking about collective belonging, modernity, national identity, and cultural imagination.

As a scholar, Marcelo is the author of Confróntese con la sospecha: ensayos críticos sobre poesía chilena de los ’90 (2006) and La ficción suprema: Gonzalo Rojas y el viaje a los comienzos (2013). He has translated into Spanish a selection of William Shakespeare’s sonnets, and works from poets such as Kenneth Rexroth, Gustaf Sobin, and Susan Howe.

A published poet himself, Marcelo has written seven poetry collections, most recently an anthology of his work entitled Breve historia del arte (2025).

Education

PhD, University of California, Berkeley