Javier Uriarte

Javier Uriarte serves as Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University's College of Arts and Sciences. He holds a Licenciatura en Letras from the Universidad de la República of Uruguay and a PhD from New York University.

His research spans Spatial Theory, Latin American Literature, War Studies, and Environmental Humanities, with particular focus on Amazon Studies, 19th Century Latin American History, Travel Narratives, and State Consolidation. His work examines the intersections between literary studies and history, geography, philosophy, and politics, specializing in travel narratives, territorial imagination, war and representation, and state consolidation in nineteenth century Latin America.

Uriarte's publications reveal a consistent focus on spatial narratives, particularly riverine and Amazonian studies. His recent work explores hydrological metaphors, frontier spaces, and the relationship between moving bodies and conceptualizations of nature, labor, and sexuality. The recurring themes across his publications include spatial imagination, territorial transformation, and the relationship between infrastructure, water systems, and cultural production.

• Uruguay's 2012 National Prize for Literature in the Unpublished literary essay category (for Spanish version of The Desertmakers)

Uriarte has co-edited several significant volumes including 'Raros uruguayos: nuevas miradas' (2010), 'Entre el humo y la niebla: Guerra y cultura en América Latina' (2016), and 'Intimate Frontiers: A Literary Geography of the Amazon' (2019). His first monograph 'The Desertmakers: Travel, War, and the State in Latin America' was published in 2020 by Routledge. He is currently working on 'Fluvial Poetics in the Amazon: Displacement, Infrastructure, Modernization' and 'Bodies, Nature, and Spatial Imagination in Amazonia', which continues his exploration of Amazonian representations in literature and travel narratives from 1904-1914.