Varderi, Alejandro 1960–

PERSONAL: Born January 17, 1960, in Caracas, Venezuela; immigrated to the United States, 1985; naturalized U.S. citizen; son of Ramón and Juana Varderi. Ethnicity: "Hispanic." Education: Universidad Central, Venezuela, B.A., 1984; University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign, M.A., 1988; New York University, Ph.D., 1995.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Modern Languages, Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York, 199 Chambers St., New York, NY 10007-1097. E-mail—avarderi@mbcc.cuny.edu.

CAREER: International Association of Students in Business and Economics, Caracas, Venezuela, financial director, 1978–80; State Foundation for the Arts, Caracas, publications director, 1984–85; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, instructor in Spanish, 1985–88; New York University, New York, NY, instructor in Spanish, 1988–96; Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, associate professor, 1998–2002, professor of Spanish, 2002–. Columbia University, lecturer at Barnard College, 1997–2000. Gilard Accounting Office, accounting assistant, 1978–79; La MetropoLitana Insurance Co., economist, 1979–80. Ediciones Oxígeno (publishing house), founding associate editor, 1980–87; Pantheon Books, editorial assistant, 1988–90.

MEMBER: Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas, North American Catalan Society, Modern Language Association of America, Instituto Literario y Cultural Hispanico, Latin American Studies Association, Latin American Writers Institute.

AWARDS, HONORS: Letras de Oro Award, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, 1987, for a novel; Disurso Literario Award, Rice University, 1988; Pennfield fellowship, New York University, 1993; teaching excellence award, University of Austin, 2000.

WRITINGS:

Ritos cívicos, 1980.

Estado e industria editorial: por qué no se vende el libro en Venezuela?, FUNDARTE (Caracas, Venezuela), 1985.

Ettedgui: Arte-información para la comunidad, Ediciones Oxígeno (Caracas, Venezuela), 1986.

Anotaciones sobre el amor y el deseo, Academia Nacionál de la Historia (Caracas, Venezuela), 1986.

Para repetir una mujer, Salvat (Barcelona, Spain), 1987.

Yo, el otro, 1993.

Severo Sarduy y Pedro Almodovar: Del barroco al kitsch en la narrativa y el cine postmodernos, Pliegos (Madrid, Spain), 1996.

Anatomia de una seducción: Reescrituras de lo femenino, Academia Nacional de la Historia (Caracas, Venezuela), 1996.

Amantes y reverentes, RIL Editores (Santiago, Chile), 1999.

Bridging Continents: Cinematic and Literary Representations of Spanish and Latin American Themes, 2005.

Work represented in anthologies, including Cuerpo plurál, Ediciones La Gaveta (Caracas, Venezuela), 1978; and Nuevos narradores del Distrito Federal, 1986. Contributor to periodicals in Caracas, including El Nacional, El Mundo, and El Universal. Founding associate editor, La gaveta ilustrada, 1977–81, Linea plural, 1986–88, and Enclave, 1991; consulting editor for other periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Alejandro Varderi once told CA: "The purpose of my writing is to persevere in the fight against intolerance toward minorities in today's world. It is a world where our perception has become extremely clouded by greed, consumerism, and the exposure to high technology—a world threatening us with an existence solely experienced on the surface of things, in an oblique and vicarious way."