Luis Miguel Isava

Luis Miguel Isava holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Emory University (Atlanta, USA) and is a Full Professor in the Department of Language and Literature at Universidad Simón Bolívar (Caracas, Venezuela). He is currently a Guest Researcher at Freie Universität (Berlin). His research focuses on contemporary poetry and poetics, the intersections of literature and philosophy, as well as theory, aesthetics, and film studies.

His work includes a book-length study of Rafael Cadenas’ poetry, Voz de amante (Lover’s Voice, 1990), and a book on poetic theory, Wittgenstein, Kraus, and Valéry: A Paradigm for Poetic Rhyme and Reason (2002). His most recent publication is De las prolongaciones de lo humano. Artefactos culturales y protocolos de la experiencia (On the Prolongations of the Human: Cultural Artifacts and Protocols of Experience, 2022).

As a translator, he has rendered into Spanish the poetry of Saint-John Perse, Enrico Testa, Emily Dickinson, and Paul Celan. He is currently working on the translation of Poena Damni, a trilogy by the Greek poet Dimitris Lyacos. He also prepared a new translation of Walter Benjamin’s essay La obra de arte en la época de su reproducibilidad técnica (The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility) in 2016, including an introduction, notes, and additional commentary.

In addition, he has published articles on literary theory, aesthetics, film, music, visual arts, and poetry in various journals and collective volumes. He is currently working on a book-length study of Jorge Luis Borges’ fiction within the framework of his theory on the “protocols of experience.”

Contact:Comparative Literature
l.isava[at]berlin.bard.edu