Zach Aguilar

Zachary Penati Aguilar is a PhD candidate in Italian Studies with certificates in Ethnicity,
Race and Migration (ER&M) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). His dissertation,
tentatively entitled “Nostra patria è il mondo intero: Italian Anarchism in South America”,
explores the cultural productions of Italian anarchists in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina between
1890 and 1950. Specifically, it analyzes how the revolutionary discourses of these communities,
either explicitly or not, both contested but also contributed to the creation of a racialized migrant subject that was legible to the burgeoning liberal nation-state. In addition to his scholarly work,
Zach is also a Writing Partner at the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning and a co-organizer
for the Other(ed) Italies Working Group, and in the past has served as Graduate Fellow for the
Center for Language Study (CLS). He has conducted extensive archival work in Argentina and
has presented at conferences in the US, Italy, and Brazil. Zach holds a BS in Neuroscience from Brown University and an MA in Italian Studies from Georgetown University.