Deborah Paredez

Deborah Paredez, Associate Professor of Writing and Chair of the Writing Program at Columbia's School of the Arts, is a poet and scholar whose work explores Latinx culture, memory, and performance, most recently in the critical memoir American Diva. Her current project, Encyclopedia of Secondhand Knowledge, is a cross-genre work of nonfiction that examines loss and reclamation through secondhand practices, drawing on Walter Benjamin's writings on collecting and capitalism alongside Tomás Ybarra-Frausto's theory of rasquachismo to explore objects ranging from Parisian flea markets to assemblage art and textile traditions of resistance.

In Paris, Paredez will revisit the Puces de Saint-Ouen and Puces de Vanves to complete research on the city's shopping arcades and secondhand markets, and to speak with artisans whose practice incorporates scraps and discarded materials.