About

Aurelie Vialette is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages & Literature at Stony Brook University, holding a courtesy appointment from Fall 2024 to Spring 2027, and is an Associate Professor at Yale University starting Fall 2024. Her academic specialization encompasses 19th-century Iberian cultural studies, including carceral studies, disability studies, transatlantic studies, slavery networks, Filipino studies, popular music, journalistic discourse, archival studies, mass and working-class organizations, and Catalan Studies. Her scholarly work includes her first book, 'Intellectual Philanthropy: the Seduction of the Masses,' which challenges traditional cultural and intellectual histories of bourgeois and working-class relations in modern Iberia by analyzing philanthropic projects aimed at industrial workers, emphasizing motivations beyond monetary gain. She is also working on 'The Colonial Laboratory: Race, Gender, and Penal Colonies in the Philippines in the 19th Century,' which investigates racial, ethical, political, and social issues related to penal colonization in the Philippines, highlighting the use of incarceration as a tool for dispossession and colonial expansion, with a focus on labor, race politics, and gender violence. Vialette has co-edited 'Dissonances of Modernity: Music, Text and Performance in Modern Spain,' exploring how music redefines political, social, and cultural conventions in Spain from the 19th century to modern times, and is involved in editing 'Cultural Legacies of Slavery in Modern Spain,' which examines how colonialism and slavery influence contemporary Spanish cultural productions and institutions. She has also proposed a book titled 'Global Prison Writing,' which considers prison writing as a form of storytelling that offers insights into incarceration across different contexts. Her digital humanities projects include directing www.clave.cat, an edition of Josep Anselm Clavé’s archive involving international collaboration, and leading the 'Mapping the Legacies of Slavery' project, which traces the enduring impacts of slavery through interdisciplinary efforts. Vialette has also published on journalistic networks of women writers between Mexico and Spain in the 19th century. At Stony Brook, she teaches courses on topics such as disabled bodies and national politics, protest and disobedience, women writers in the Hispanic world, and the carceral system, among others.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Humanities
• Psychology
• Ethnology
• Law
• Gender studies
• Art
• Neuroscience
• History

Selected publications

• Prison Abolition in Spain

  2025-02-28

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter examines the prison abolition movement in Spain. It begins with a historical perspective of abolitionism, which aims to dismantle forms of domination and mechanisms of control in society – abolitionism was deeply rooted in Spanish society by those who opposed slavery in the nineteenth century. Prison abolitionism is a growing movement in the United States, but it is almost nonexistent in Spain today. Why is there no civic movement calling for the abolition of this particular culture of punishment? This chapter looks at the scholarship and initiatives that have paved the way for the transformation of the justice system and the obstacles they have encountered. It also draws on interviews with the participants in this struggle, problematizing current Spanish debates on imprisonment and questioning the reasons for the lack of support for abolitionism. It argues that nineteenth-century jurists’ proposals for reforming the prison system are still rooted in Spanish society, especially how prisons were conceived as places of healing and redemption of individuals.

  PublisherDOI

• Los legados de la Primera República en Filipinas a finales del siglo XIX: retórica de la discapacidad en las colonias penales

  Historia Contemporánea · 2025-01-31

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Este trabajo analiza de qué manera las ideas debatidas durante la Primera República española acerca de la reforma penal influyeron en el establecimiento de coloniales penales con filipinos en las islas Filipinas durante la Restauración. Para ello, muestro que los dirigentes republicanos no consideraron las islas Filipinas como estado integrante de la República, sino que las relegaron a un espacio marginal con una población que describían como discapacitados para el ejercicio de sus funciones de ciudadanía. Después, se estudia un concurso de la Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas, organizado al terminar la Primera República, cuyo objetivo era preguntar si convenía establecer colonias penales en las islas de dominio imperial español. Exploro la repuesta al concurso de ciertos juristas como Francisco Lastres, Concepción Arenal y Pere Armengol. Lastres hablaba de “renacer” mientras Arenal y Armengol ponían énfasis en su rechazo de la explotación de los prisioneros para construir la colonia. Arenal, en particular, insistía en la necesidad de respetar en todo momento los derechos humanos. Mi tesis al respecto de estas fuentes es que nos muestran que lo penal es una de las fuentes que revela la administración imperial. Finalmente, insisto en la necesidad de estudiar las fuentes filipinas del período de la Restauración y presto atención al establecimiento de una colonia penal con presos filipinos: la colonia agrícola de San Ramón en Zamboanga, en la isla de Mindanao. Pongo de manifiesto cómo los administradores españoles que trabajan en la colonia penal usaban una retórica de la discapacidad para referirse a los cuerpos de los presos filipinos, quitándoles toda agencia y civilización.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “You Said Independence?” The Case of Scotland's and Catalonia's Nationalisms: A Discussion of J. H. Elliott's <i>Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion</i>

  boundary 2 · 2024-02-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This review essay addresses one of the most complex contemporary political issues: secessionism. The review essay discusses J. H. Elliott's 2018 book, Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion, to raise questions regarding the processes of independence in the European Union. Particularly, it focuses on the problematic conceptualization of the debates about Catalan independence in twenty-first-century Europe, explaining why concepts such as nation and nationalism should be rethought, which also implies the need to rethink the use of symbols such as national flags. It also insists that one cannot write on such an urgent political topic without addressing at length the role of culture in political thought and national sentiment. The author theorizes the role of the emotions in the creation of political subjectivities, concentrating especially on the central role that the web and the media are given in the fight for independence.

  PublisherDOI

• &lt;em&gt;Incomplete Conquests. The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines&lt;/em&gt;. By Stephanie Mawson. Ithaca, London: Cornell UP, 2023. 276 pages. &lt;em&gt;Intercolonial Intimacies. Relinking Latin/o America to the Philippines 1898-1964&lt;/em&gt;. By Paula Park. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2022. 244 pages.

  Latin American Literary Review · 2024-11-22

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This is a book review.

  PublisherDOI

• Teaching the Art of Colonization: Race Politics and Agricultural Colonies in the Nineteenth-century Philippines

  Bulletin of Hispanic Studies · 2023 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • Humanities
  • Political Science

  This article focuses on hegemonic pedagogies shaping Spanish colonial practices in the Philippines in the second half of the nineteenth century. I focus on a new epistemological system rooted in positivism called ‘the art of colonization’, a new discipline in the field of International Law, as well as the name of a University of Madrid course taken by civil administrators who would serve in the Philippines. I argue that this body of humanistic knowledge, based on a racialized discourse of domination, focused on human geography to favour white/ European emigration. Furthermore, I demonstrate that it also involved an economic programme through the creation of sustainable agricultural colonies and that it insisted on penal deportation as an ancillary practice of colonization. I conclude by showing that this art put in place pedagogy as a tool to foster and anchor the relationship of power between colonizers and colonized.

  PublisherDOI

• «Su majestad la Lengua Española», de Miguel de Unamuno (1908): comentario

  Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · 2021-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Nineteenth-Century Women Activists

  Routledge eBooks · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • History

  This chapter concentrates on the politics of women’s cross-dressing in the nineteenth century. It focuses on Concepción Arenal and argues that her cross-dressing was a form of public activism. She aimed to bring social change with her writings and with direct interventions, of which cross-dressing was a fundamental piece. I discuss the scholarship on Arenal’s cross-dressing and argue that contrary to what has been said, it was related to gender fluidity and not sex. Her wearing men’s clothing served a purpose which I believe calls for a better conceptualization of her activism. The complexity of this type of activism allows us to further understand the fight for women’s intellectual participation, as women, in socio-political debates. Arenal wanted women to be able to take on other functions than those usually ascribed to them and she defended women’s education and their intellectual abilities. Her demands were public and should be called activism. Cross-dressing in this context became a tool for activism.

  PublisherDOI

• Reviews of Books

  Bulletin of Spanish Studies · 2020-09-13

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The dream of a Federal Republic

  Routledge eBooks · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Neuroscience

  This chapter investigates activist Rossend Arús i Arderiu’s archive. Arús was in favor of a federation of states on the Iberian Peninsula and his archive shows an anti-colonial ideology and a discourse in favor of a sovereign Catalonia inspired by the United States struggle for independence. This chapter argues that, as a Catalan freemason and Republican Federalist, Arús looked to the US as a model for a Catalonia that would ideally be part of a federalist state encompassing the whole peninsula (including Spain and Portugal). Arús articulated ideas central to Republican Federalism and Catalan freemasonry through his activism. He was, as well, a central figure in the cultural and ideological exchanges between Catalonia and the Americas. The article analyses unpublished manuscripts and Arús’ Cartas a la dona, his satirical poem on the role of Spain in the US World’s Fair of Philadelphia (1876).

  PublisherDOI

• SAMUEL LLANO, Discordant Notes: Marginality and Social Control in Madrid 1850– 1930. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2018. 258 pp.

  Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · 2020-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• John B. Margenot

  2 shared

• Jeremy Squires

  2 shared

• Eva Juarros Daussà

  University of Amsterdam

  2 shared

• Pep Vila

  2 shared

• Darcy Donahue

  Miami University

  1 shared

• Kathryn Crameri

  1 shared

• Ramón Espejo-Saavedra

  Loyola University Maryland

  1 shared

• Lorraine Ryan

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• North American Catalan Society Prize for Outstanding Work in…