Literature, Philology and Politics

The Story of Twenty Years of the course Filología Hispánica at Universidad Nacional de La Plata (1966‒1987)

Abstract

We will approach an object yet not sufficiently studied: the history of the Chair of Hispanic Philology at National University of La Plata. We will focus on two politically convulsive decades that turned back-and-forth between specially violent dictatorships and democracies in Argentina's history. This study will be conducted within a methodological framework that considers the processes of institutionalisation and professionalisation of Letters in the second half of the twentieth century, carried out according to the parameters offered by the INTERCO‒SSH Project for the analysis of the organization of a specific academic subfield, philology, in a specific university in Argentina. This paper focuses on the institutional and academic development of the Chair of Hispanic Philology in two decades, and will conduct it through the analysis of syllabuses, publications of the professors and documents that account for the conditions of access, permanence and departure from the position of the professors who taught the subject. It is expected to contribute not only to the study of the specific history of the University, a vacant area, but also to the knowledge of the institutionalization and professionalization of philology in Argentina.