In The Return of the Contemporary, Nicolás Campisi combines the fields of post-dictatorship studies and environmental humanities to analyze Latin American cultural production in the neoliberal age. Each chapter pairs two authors from different parts of Latin America and the Caribbean who create a common vocabulary in which to frame the various crises of the region’s present and recent past, such as climate change, forced migration, the collapse of state institutions, and the afterlives of slavery. By situating itself at the intersection of ecocritical and environmental humanities, affect studies, and the politics of memory and postmemory, Campisi presents new comparative methods to show how Latin America’s neoliberal crisis prompted significant changes in how the novel as a form imagines a different future. 

Nicolás Campisi is assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University. His research focuses on contemporary Latin American literature, environmental humanities, and memory studies. His work has appeared in journals such as Revista Hispánica Moderna, Revista Iberoamericana, and A Contracorriente.