Charles Maurice Pigott

Biography

My research and teaching focus on literature produced in Spanish and four indigenous languages of Latin America: Central & Southern Quechua, Yucatec Maya and Nahuatl. I combine literary studies, linguistics and anthropology to explore how indigenous literatures engage with philosophical questions. I am Lecturer of Hispanic Studies at University of Strathclyde, Quondam Fellow of Hughes Hall (University of Cambridge), Research Associate of Centre of Latin American Studies (University of Cambridge) and Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy.

Until August 2021, I was Associate Professor of Literature and Humanities at Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP) in Mexico, where I founded a new series of bilingual indigenous literature published by UDLAP. I now co-edit the series with Nahuatl author, Martín Tonalmeyotl: http://blog.udlap.mx/blog/2020/09/udlap-presento-los-primeros-libros-de-la-serie-bilingue-literatura-en-lenguas-originarias/

Previously, I held a three-year Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, and a Research Fellowship at Hughes Hall, during which time I spoke with over thirty Maya authors in Mexico as part of the research for my monograph, "Writing the Land, Writing Humanity: The Maya Literary Renaissance", and travelled throughout southern Mexico in search of the country’s most elusive bird species. During the Fellowship, I spent two months learning the Southern Quechua language in Cuzco, Peru, and another two months learning Nahuatl in Puebla, Mexico. These were the official languages of the Incan and Aztec Empires, and are spoken by millions today. I also had a consultancy role for the BBC in the development of their “Bitesize” educational programme on the Ancient Mayas https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zq6svcw, and convened an indigenous studies module for the MPhil programme in Latin American Studies at University of Cambridge.

Prior to my position in Cambridge, I spent a year learning Yucatec Maya at the Autonomous University of the Yucatan, funded by a Mexican Government Postdoctoral Fellowship, and held a concurrent Research Associateship at the Zoology Department, University of Oxford. My PhD (University of London, 2013), funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (UK), involved spending a year in the Peruvian Andes, during which time I learned the Central Quechua language and documented bilingual folksongs composed in Spanish and Quechua. My thesis engaged the folksongs in dialogue with the philosophical perspectives of Derrida, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, to explore the extent to which the concept of “identity” is applicable in the Andean cultural context.

Before embarking on my PhD, I spent a year as a British Council teaching assistant in France and Austria, in order to brush up on my French and German, and participated in an ornithological expedition to a remote part of the Bolivian Amazon, organized by the University of Glasgow Expedition Society. I was awarded the Arts Faculty Prize for my undergraduate degree in Anthropology and Hispanic Studies at University of Glasgow (2007), and the Class Prize for Anthropology (Faculty of Social Sciences).

Other publications include:

• Pigott, Charles. “Aj-ts’íib or el letrado? Authorial Identity in Gómez Navarrete’s Bilingual Maya Poetry”. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, vol. 98, no. 4, 2021, pp.415-432. DOI: 10.3828/bhs.2021.24
•       Pigott, Charles. “Cosmic Narratology and Human Exceptionalism in Maya Poetry: Villegas’ Yáax K’áak’ [Primordial Fire]”. Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, vol. 24, no. 2, 2020, pp.169-184 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14688417.2020.1771609
• Pigott, Charles. “Maize and Semiotic Emergence in a Contemporary Maya Tale: Tec Tun’s, U tsikbalo’ob XNuk Nal [Tales of Old Mother Corn]”. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, vol. 2, no. 1, 2019, pp.112-126. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25729861.2019.1674547
• Pigott, Charles. “The Last Inca: Hegemony and Abjection in an Andean Poetics of Discrimination”. Modern Languages Open (Liverpool University Press), vol. 1, 2018, pp.1-35. https://www.modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.146/
• Pigott, Charles. “Foreign Encounters in the Pallas of Bolognesi, Peru”. Latin American Indian Literatures Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp.28-53.
• Pigott, Charles. “The Soqomocho of Huayllacayán”. Latin American Indian Literatures Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 54-61.
• Pigott, Charles. “Ecological Ethics in Two Andean Songs”. Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 26, no. 1, 2014, pp. 81-109. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/539875
• Pigott, Charles. “Unity and Difference in Andean Songs”. Oral Tradition, vol. 28, no. 1, 2013, pp.77-102. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/539091
• Pigott, Charles. “The Lyrical Creation of Community: Song as a Catalyst of Social Cohesion in Andean Peru”. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, vol. 9, no. 4, 2013, pp.336-351. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/117718011300900405

Contact: [email protected]

Education

Anthropology & Hispanic Studies, University of Glasgow, 2007
Language Documentation, University of London, 2009
PhD, Cultural Studies, University of London, 2013

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Latin American literature

Comparative literature

Latin American indigenous languages (Central & Southern Quechua, Yucatec Maya, Nahuatl)

Ecocriticism and environmental humanities

Interdisciplinary research (literary studies, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy)

Personal Interests

Natural history (all aspects, but especially birding)

Music (especially singing)

Languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Yucatec and Classical Maya, Nahuatl, Central and Southern Quechua, French, German, some Italian)

Books

Articles