Max Ubelaker Andrade

Research Interests

Max Ubelaker Andrade's research explores the cultural contexts of literary visuality in 20th-century Latin America and the Early Modern period. He is the author of Borges Beyond the Visible (Penn State University Press, 2019) and the translator of Néstor Ponce's Disappearance without absence (Waterloo Press, 2017) and boy says (punctum books, 2024). His essays have appeared in Variaciones Borges, Cervantes, AGNI, Chasqui, y La Nación (Argentina).

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) - Boston University

Biosketch

Ubelaker Andrade is Senior Editor of Canal, the digital, multilingual undergraduate journal of the Department of World Languages and Cultures.

Selected Publications

Books

• Author of Borges Beyond the Visible. Penn State University Press, April 2019.
• Translator of Néstor Ponce’s Disappearance without absence / Desapariencia no engaña (Waterloo Press 2017)
• Translator of Néstor Ponce's boy says / Vos es (punctum books 2024)

Essays:

• "Literary Visuality and Islam in Borges." Approaches to Teaching the Works of Jorge Luis Borges, The MLA, 2025.
• "Gombrowicz, Borges y la trampa de un Cosmos cartográfico." Tropelías, Vol. 10 (September 2024): 83–96.
• "On Borges’s Blindness" (with Ilán Stavans) in Translation as Home: A Multilingual Life (University of Toronto Press 2024)

(Also available in the open-access journal Amerika)

• "Borges and the Paper Kingdom." Chasqui Vol. 51.2 (November, 2022): 9-27.
• "Tennyson, Kipling and 'El Zahir.'” Variaciones Borges Vol. 54 (October 2022): 43-60.
• "Beholding Black Light: Art & Visual Paradox in Don Quixote.” Cervantes. Fall 2018.
• "El hornero." La Nación. April 24, 2015.
• "Witold Gombrowicz: Cosmos y un mundo literario…” La Nación. August 8, 2014.
• "Felisberto Hernández: Música, literatura y frutas salvajes.” La Nación. January 17, 2014.
• “Borges y la frontera difusa entre lo real y lo ficticio.” La Nación. June 21, 2013.
• “On Coincidence, Collapse, and Textual Bridges.” AGNI. Vol. 78, Fall 2013.
• "Palomas de Buenos Aires." La Nación. February 15, 2013.
• “Don Quixote: Pain, Space, and Artifice.” Cervantes. Vol. 32.2, Fall 2012.
• “The Reader's Erasure in Jorge Luis Borges' 'La otra muerte.'” Variaciones Borges. Vol. 34 (October 2012)
• “Números, humo, y dinero: La canción interminable.” La Nación. October 26, 2012.

Selected Presentations

• Centro Internacional Antonio Machado (CIAM). Soria (España). Lecture title: “Witold Gombrowicz, Jorge Luis Borges, y la cartografía liminal de Cosmos.” Lecturer and participant in the international conference “Los límites de la literatura/ la literatura en los límites.” July 19-20, 2023.École normale supérieure de Lyon. Lecture title: “Jorge Luis Borges: Two Approaches to Literary Visuality.” Lecturer and Panel Discussant in the international symposium: “(Critical) Blindness Studies: Current Debates and Future Directions/Études (critiques) sur la cécité: débats actuels et directions à venir.” June 30, July 1, 4 and 5, 2022
• Boston University. Lecture title: “Borges and the Paper Kingdom: Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy and ‘La biblioteca de Babel.’” November 19, 2021.
• Ethical Culture Fieldston School. Lecture title: “Reimagining Borges’s Hexagonal Library.” November 19, 2021.
• The Manipal Centre for European Studies’ Lecture Series at Manipal Academy of Higher Education. Lecture title: “Don Quixote’s Cartographic Vision: Mapping, Imagination and Political Identity.” September 8, 2020.
• NeMLA Conference, Boston. Lecture title: “Borges’s Literary Theology: ‘Islam’ and the Visible.” March 7, 2020.
• NeMLA Conference, Washington D.C. Lecture title: “On Tango Singers and Tour Guides: Tomás Eloy Martínez’s El cantor de tango.” March 23, 2019.
• Boston University. Translation Now Conference: Conversations on the Art of Literary Translation. Lecture title: “Literary Translation as a Contested Site of Representation.” September 29, 2018.
• Harvard University. Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Presentation and Panel Discussion. Lecture title: “On Facilitation as Teaching: Participatory Pedagogy.” June 27, 2018.
• Royal Holloway, University of London. Blind Creations: An International Conference on Blindness and the Arts. Lecture title: “Against Seeing: Jorge Luis Borges’ Literary Imagination.” June 29, 2015.
• NeMLA Conference at Susquehanna University. Lecture title: “Reimagined Trauma, Sex and Intimacy: Borges’ ‘Emma Zunz.’” April 5, 2014.
• Boston University, Writing in the Americas Seminar Lecture Series. Lecture title: “Islam and ‘El Aleph’: An Obscured Literary Theology.”