Jorge Coronado is Professor of modern Latin American and Andean literatures and cultures at Northwestern University. His undergraduate courses range across the 19th and 20th centuries and draw from various disciplines and cultural practices, such as history, archaeology, anthropology, music, photography, and literature. His graduate courses focus on two areas: literary and cultural theory and Andean studies.  He has taught in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese as well as in Comparative Literary Studies Program and the Program in Latin American & Caribbean Studies, where he is a core faculty member. Beyond these, his affiliations at Northwestern include the Andean Cultures & Histories working group, the Center for Native American & Indigenous Research, the Program in Critical Theory, and the German Department.

He is the author of The Andes Imagined: Indigenismo, Society, and Modernity (Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas series. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009) and Portraits in the Andes: Photography and Agency, 1900-1950 (Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas series. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). A co-edited volume on visual practices in relation to notions of landscape and region entitled Visiones de los Andes. Ensayos críticos sobre el concepto de paisaje y región (Entretejiendo. Crítica y teoría cultural latinoamericana series. Plural Editores and University of Pittsburgh) appeared in 2019 in La Paz. A co-edited anthology of anarchist and Marxist-influenced writing entitled Anarquismos y marxismos en Bolivia, Ecuador y Peru. Textos esenciales (Ediciones Achawata) appeared in 2023 and, in 2025, an expanded second edition was published, also in Lima. A co-edited volume on the cultural dimensions of archaeology, Archaeology and Its Avatars: Science and Culture in Latin America will appear on Northwestern University Press in July 2026. Its Spanish-language version is slated to be published soon thereafter by Editorial UniAndes in Bogotá. Currently, he is advancing two single-author book projects: a manuscript tentatively entitled “Lo andino: región, cultura, concepto” that explores how the region has cohered in the cultural imagination since the early 19th century, and a study of the strange lettered practices that subalterns produced in early 20th century Latin America by tergiversating intellectuals’ tutelage to their own ends. 

His prize-winning research and academic initiatives have won funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, and most recently the American Philosophical Society, among others. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and lectured broadly at universities in Latin America, Europe and the United States. At Northwestern, he has been active in building the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and the Program in Latin American & Caribbean Studies. He served as Chair of the former for two three-year terms (2010-2017), oversaw its renovation, and inaugurated its doctoral program. He currently serves as Director of LACS and Director of the Andean Cultures & Histories working group at the Weinberg College Center for Global Studies. He has participated in international research councils such as CALAS (Center for Advanced Latin American Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences) and editorial boards such as the PMLA, the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, the Revista de Estudios Bolivianos, and Iberoamericana Vervuert's Los ojos en las manos book series.  In 2021, he assumed the responsibilities of Series Editor for Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas at the University of Pittsburgh Press.