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Miguel Caballero

Assistant Professor

Ph.D. Princeton University
Miguel Caballero is Assistant Professor of Iberian Studies, specializing in the 20th and 21st centuries, with an interdisciplinary approach that bridges literature, art, and philosophy. His research focuses on two main areas:
 
The first is avant-garde art and literature, anti-fascism, urban and heritage studies. His forthcoming book, The Monument of Tomorrow: Avant-Garde Conservation and the Spanish War (Penn State University Press, 2025), examines how the radical theory and practice of creative destruction evolved into creative conservation in response to the rise of fascism. In wartime Spain, writers, artists, architects, philosophers, activists, and the people at large pioneered avant-garde approaches to conservation and radical monumentality, laying the groundwork for later protectionist efforts during World War II and contributing to the development of the notion of World Heritage. In connection with this research, he has curated two exhibitions: Ephemeral Treasures in Moscow (sponsored by the Neubauer Collegium of Culture and Society) and the solo exhibition of artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo Fake Games. The Collectivized Monument in IVAM, Valencia. 
 
The second research line focuses on medical humanities, specifically HIV/AIDS studies. He is currently working on a book that explores HIV art and critical theory, examining the development and commercialization of antiretroviral therapies for both HIV-positive and HIV-negative individuals (2010s-present). This academic project builds on his activist work, whose writings can be found in ASS (Amor, Sexo y Serología). 
 
Caballero’s work is often rooted in archival research and adopts a transnational perspective. He has published on Spanish communist monumentality in the Soviet Union in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies; wartime scale-models of the destruction produced by air raids also in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies; the ideology of labor in modern architecture in Brazil, forthcoming with Revista Hispánica Moderna; agitation trains in Lázaro Cárdenas’s Mexico, forthcoming with Hispanic Review; or the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, in Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, among others. He has contributed to monographs on collective art (CSIC), modern architecture in Cuba (Arquine), environmental cultural studies (Tamesis), and new realisms (Almenara).
 
He is also interested in psychoanalysis, organized the conference “Freud Today” at the Freud Museum in Vienna, and was a Fellow of the American Psychoanalytic Association.  

He is part of the working group “Puentes creativos. Desplazamientos, retornos, disidencias y adhesiones en el arte español contemporáneo” at Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Spain.
 
At Northwestern, besides his main appointment at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, he is a member of the Global Avant-Garde and Modernism, and Critical Theory clusters, with an affiliation to the Art History Department.
Caballero welcomes inquiries to advise undergraduate and graduate projects on the historical and neo-avant-gardes, heritage studies, medical humanities, HIV/AIDS studies, queer studies, or other topics related to 20th and 21st century culture at the intersections of literature, art, and philosophy.