Jody Blanco

Office Hours

John D. (Jody) Blanco researches and teaches the colonial and post-colonial literatures and cultures of the Philippines, Latin America, and the Pacific, with a focus on the early modern (16th-18th c.) periods. He has taught at UCSD as a member of the Literature faculty since 2001. He is the author of Frontier Constitutions: Christianity and Colonial Empire in the 19th Century Philippines (UC Press, 2009); and Counter-Hispanization in the Colonial Philippines: Literature, Law, Religion, and Native Custom (Amsterdam University Press, 2023). He also translated Julio Ramos’s book Desencuentros de la modernidad en América Latina: cultura y política del siglo XIX, which was published as Divergent Modernities of Latin America: Culture and Politics of the Nineteenth Century] by Duke University Press in 1999.

In addition to research and teaching, Professor Blanco has served as the Director of Latin American Studies at UC San Diego; as well as the Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the Division of Arts and Humanities (2016-18). He currently serves on the Advisory editorial boards of the Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, the Philippine journal Unitas, and Perspectives in the Arts & Humanities Asia. He also serves on the collective board of the Tepoztlán Institute, which hosts an annual conference in Tepoztlán, México.

Pronouns: He, him, his

Languages: Filipino (Tagalog), Spanish, English

Books

• Counter-Hispanization in the Colonial Philippines: Literature, Law, Religion, and Native Custom (book). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2023. LINK
• Frontier Constitutions: Christianity and Colonial Empire in the 19th Century Philippines. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Philippine reprint by University of the Philippines Press, Quezon City [2010]). LINK

Articles & Book Chapters

• “Futuros pasados indígenas en la literatura colonial filipina de los tagalos.” Manual de Literatura Hispanofilipina, eds. Rocío Ortuño and Jorge Mojarro. London: Routledge [forthcoming, 2024].
• “The Prose of Pacification and ‘Spiritual Conquest’ at the Origins of Philippine Literature in Spanish,” in María del Rocío Ortuño Casanova and Axel Gasquet, eds. Transnational Philippines: Cultural encounters in Philippine literature in Spanish. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2024.
• “Spanish-Galleon Trade.” SAGE Encyclopedia of Filipina/x/o Studies. Kevin Nadal and Allison Tantiangco, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing, 2022.
• “The Allegory of the Billiken in Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels: Capitalism as Religion in the Philippines under US Rule (1902-1946).” In UNITAS 95:2 (2022). 100-year centennial special issue. LINK
• "History: Routes Through Roots of Filipinx Longing and Belonging," in Filipinx American Studies: Reckoning, Reclamation, Transformation, eds. Enrique Bonus and Antonio Tiongson. NY: Fordham University press, 2022.
• “Presumptions of Empire: Relapses, reboots and reversions in the transpacific networks of Iberian globalization.” In Routledge Companion on Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean (1492-1898) Santa Arias and Yolanda Martínez San-Miguel, eds. New York: Routledge, 2021.
• “El príncipe Cristiano oriental: el teatro jesuita en Filipinas durante el siglo XVII y la visión global de las monarquías compuestas.” Translation by Jorge Mojarro. Guaraguao (Revista de Cultura Latinoamericana) 42:65 (Winter 2021). LINK
• “Idolatry and Apostasy in the 1633 Jesuit Annual Letter,” in The Spanish Pacific, 1521-1815: A Reader of Primary Sources, eds. Christina Lee and Ricardo Padrón. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. 115-130.
• “Between the Economy of Law and the Law of Economy in the Trans-Pacific Cultural Imaginary” (translated as: “在法的經濟與經濟法之間的跨太平洋文化想像”), in Border-Sovereignty-Law, ed. Shu-Fen Lin, Hsinchu, Taiwan: National Chao Tung University, 2020.
• “Afterword: From Colonial Histories to Colonial Genealogies,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 19:2 (Spring 2020), 130-140. LINK
• Translation from Spanish of Fr. Juan de Bueras (SJ)’s Carta Anua de 1633, in The Spanish Pacific, 1521-1815: A Reader of Primary Sources, eds. Christina Lee and Ricardo Padrón. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. 115-130.
• “Barlaam and Josaphat in Early Modern Spain and the colonial Philippines: Spiritual Exercises of Freedom at the Center and Periphery,” in Iberian Empires and the Roots of Globalization, eds. Anna More, Rachel O’Toole, and Ivonne del Valle. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press (Hispanic Issues series v. 44), 2019. 303-330.
• "A Mexican Princess in the Tagalog Sultan's Court: Floripes of the Doce Pares and the Trans-Pacific Efflorescence of Philippine Romance and Theater." UNITAS 91:2 (Winter 2019). LINK
• “Orientations and Orientalizations of Philippine Nationalism in the Twentieth Century,” in Philippine Palimpsests: Essays for the 21st Century, edited by Martin Manalansan and Augusto Espiritu. New York: New York University Press, 2015.
• “Our Lady of Anarchy: The aftermath of theocracy and the respublica Christiana on the frontiers of the Spanish empire,” in Unequal Encounters: Colonial Politics, Religion, and the Rhetoric of Law, eds. Santa Arias and Raúl Marrero-Fente, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press (Hispanic Issues series), 2014.
• With Ivonne del Valle, “Reorienting Carl Schmitt’s Nomos: Political Theology and the Colonial Space of Exception in the Creation of Modern and Global Worlds.” Introduction to Política común 5. Special Issue: Modern Political Theory and Colonial Studies, edited by John D. Blanco and Ivonne del Valle), Spring 2014. LINK
• Translation from Spanish of Carl Schmitt’s “The Planetary Tension Between Orient and Occident and the Opposition Between Land and Sea,” Política común 5. Special issue: Modern Political Theory and Colonial Studies, edited by John D. Blanco and Ivonne del Valle. April 2014. Translation of “La tensión planetaria entre el Oriente y Occidente y la oposición entre tierra y mar,” Revista de Estudios Políticos 81 (1955), 3-28. LINK
• “Christian Identity in the Philippines” (translated as: « L’identité chrétienne en 1898 »), in Philippines Contemporains, ed. William Gueraiche, Paris and Bangkok: Les Indes Savants / IRASEC, 2013.
• “La religión Cristiana Filipina durante la época colonial: transculturación de las costumbres e innovación de las prácticas,” in Repensar Filipinas: Política, Identidad y Religión en la construcción nacional filipina, Barcelona, Ediciones Bellaterra, 2009 (pp. 207-232).
• “Race as Praxis in the Philippines at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Southeast Asian Studies (Kyoto) 49:3, Fall 2011. LINK
• “Subjects of Baroque Economy: Creole and pirate epistemologies of mercantilism in the 17th century Spanish and Dutch (East) Indies,” Encounters 1 (winter 2009). Reprinted in Engaging Otherness, ed. Rafael Reyes-Ruiz. New York: Macmillan, 2013.
• “1896-1996: Patterns of Reform, Repetition, and Return in the First Centennial of the Filipino Revolution” in Positively No Filipinos Allowed, eds. Antonio Tiongson, et al. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006.
• “The Pastoral Theme in Colonial Literature and Politics,” Diliman Review 52: 1 (2005). Reprinted in Philippine Studies: Have We Gone Beyond St. Louis?, ed. Priscelina Patajo Legasto, Quezon City (Philippines): University of the Philippines Press, 2008. LINK
• “The Gothic Underside of U.S. Imperialism,” Amerasia Journal 31:2 (2005).
• "Baroque Modernity and the Colonial World: Aesthetics and Catastrophe in Nick Joaquin's Portrait of the Artist as a Filipino," Kritika Kultura: An electronic journal of literary / cultural and language studies, no. 4 (March 2004)
• “Transformations of the Blood Compact: International Law and the State of Exception in the 1896 Filipino Revolution and the U.S. Takeover of the Philippines,” Postcolonial Studies 7.1 (Spring 2004). LINK
• "Bastards of the Unfinished Revolution: Bolívar's Ismael and Rizal's Martí at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century," Radical History Review 89 (Spring 2004). Reprinted as Imagining Our Americas: Toward a Transnational Frame, edited by Sandhya Shukla and Heidi Tinsman. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. LINK
• “Translator’s Foreword,” in Julio Ramos, Divergent Modernities: Literature and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, trans. John D. Blanco with intro. José David Saldívar. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
  25. Translation from Spanish of Julio Ramos’s Divergent Modernities in Latin America: Culture and Politics in the Nineteenth Century, trans. and notes John D. Blanco with intro. José D. Saldívar. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Translation of: Desencuentros de la modernidad en América Latina: literatura y política en el siglo XIX. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1989.
• “Economium Admirabile: Return and Redemption in José Rizal’s Noli me tangere and the Rizal-Pastells Correspondence,” in The Likhaan Anthology of Contemporary Theory and Criticism in Filipino Literature, ed. Neil Garcia. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2000.
• “Shibboleths of Rizal in the Aftermath of 1898.” Lucero (Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies) 10 (Spring 1999).
• “Cross the Line: Goya and Kant Between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Budhi vol. 2, no. 1 (Spring 1998).
• “From the Letter of the Law to the Law of the Letter: Translating Sovereignty in José Francisco Lozano’s Letras y figuras and the Pasyon Texts of the Colonial Period.” Journal of English Studies and Comparative Literature, vol. 1, no. 2 (January 1998).
• Translation from Spanish of Julio Ramos’s “The Repose of Heroes” Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 2 (June 1996). Original: typescript.

Book Reviews

• Christina Lee’s Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines Under Early Spanish Rule in the journal Church History (forthcoming).
• México y Filipinas: culturas y memorias sobre el Pacífico, eds. Thomas Calvo y Paulina Machuca in journal Mexican Studies / Estudios Mexicanos 33:03 (December 2017), 449-451.
• Adam Lifshey’s Subversions of the American Century: Filipino Literature in Spanish and the Transpacific Transformation of the United States in the journal American Literary History [ALH] Online Review Series IX (2017). 1-4.
• Anna More’s Baroque Sovereignty: Carlos Sigüenza y Góngora and the Creole Archive of Colonial Mexico in the journal Comparative Literature 67:2 (2015), 228-232.
• Sarita See and the afterlives of decolonization. Review of The Decolonized Eye: Filipino-American Art and Performance in the journal Postcolonial Studies 15:3 (2012). 389-392.
• Neferti Tadiar’s Things Fall Away: Philippine Historical Experience and the Makings of Globalization in the journal Comparative Literature 63:2 (2011), 230-234.
• Linda España-Maram’s Creating Masculinity in Los Angeles’ Little Manila; Working-Class Filipinos and Popular Culture, 1920s-1950s in Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania / Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) (2010).
• Augusto Fauni Espiritu’s Five Faces of Exile: The Nation and Filipino American Intellectuals, in American Historical Review (October 2009).

• Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (Spanish and Tagalog), UC Berkeley, 2001
• M.A. in Comparative Literature (Spanish and Tagalog), UC Berkeley, 1996
• B.A. in Arts and Ideas, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), 1990