A University of Tennessee professor was honored last fall by the capital city of Ecuador for his contributions to the study of Ecuadorian culture and literature.
Michael Handelsman, professor of modern foreign languages and literature, received the Medal of Honor from Quito and was named an honorary professor at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar.
Handelsman, who began studying Ecuadorian culture in 1970 when he received a Fulbright fellowship to study journalism, said the West is unfamiliar with Latin America.
“Actually, people from the U.S. and Europe know very little about Latin America, at least beyond the stereotypes associated with our concepts of underdevelopment and third worldism,” he said. “A long history of colonialism and coloniality have conditioned us to view the world from a predominantly western European/U.S. perspective, and issues related to racism have in no small measure influenced our indifference and ignorance vis-à-vis Latin America.”
Handelsman, who acts as the director for the Latin American studies program, said his research has focused on Ecuadorian literature and the dissemination of its culture.
“Specifically, I have published on women writers, literary journals, issues related to national identity, Afro Hispanic literature and globalization.”
One of Handelsman’s colleagues in the Latin American studies program said that it is through his efforts that the program exists at all.
“He’s worked tirelessly to promote the study of Latin America at UT,” Todd Diacon, professor of history, said. “He single-handedly kept the study of Latin America at the forefront at UT.”
Handelsman said he studies globalization from a Latin American perspective in his most recent book, “Reading Globalization from the Center of the World: Identity and Resistance in Ecuador.”
“[My] emphasis is to read the processes of globalization from the point of view of people from the global south, as opposed to privileging literary and social texts authored in Europe and the U.S.,” he said.
Diacon, whose expertise is in Brazilian history, said globalization only exacerbates existing financial crises in Latin American countries.
“They’re pressured to open up their economies, but they don’t get similarly preferential opportunities from the U.S. to open up their markets here.”
He said the biggest issue facing Latin America is the disparity between the rich and poor.
“The rich hold all the wealth and the poor don’t have anything.”
