Widely esteemed as one of the most insightful and original writers and academics in Peru today, Victor Vich is an Associate Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) and a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP). His interdisciplinary approach to understanding Peru's complex literary, cultural, and political histories and current landscape has resulted in a number of groundbreaking studies, and he was instrumental in establishing at PUCP an interdisciplinary master's degree program in cultural studies.
After receiving a BA in Latin American literature from PUCP in 1992, Mr. Vich came to the United States to continue his studies, first at Duke University, where he earned a master's degree in Romance languages (1997), and then at Georgetown University, where he completed his Ph.D. in Latin American literature in 2000. With the support of Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú (RED) and the Ford Foundation, on his return to Peru he was able to expand his dissertation into his first monograph: The discourse of the street Traveling comedians and the tensions of modernity in Peru (RED, 2001).
An examination of street performers' ability to give voice to truths about Peru's terribly violent recent past as the country's Truth Commission and population couldn't, Los comedianos ambulantes marked Mr. Vich's initial exploration of the interrelationships of politics, culture, and art. Subsequently he authored or edited a number of books as well as articles in academic and popular journals that further explore this interplay, among them El caníbal es el otro. Violencia y cultura en el Perú contemporánea (IEP, 2002); Del viento, el poder y la memoria , edited with Cecilia Monteagudo (PUCP, 2002); Oralidad y poder. Herramienta metodológicas , with Virginia Zavala (Ed. Norma, 2004); “Desobediencia simólica: performance, participacion y política al final de la dictadura Fujimori,” in La cultura en las crisis Latinoamericanas , edited by Alejandro Grimson (CLACSO, 2004); Cultural Policies : Critical Essays , edited with Guillermo Cortés (Lima: INC, 2006); and Against the Dream of the Just: Peruvian Literature in the Face of Political Violence , with Juan Carlos Ubilluz and Alexandra Hibbett (IEP, 2009). During his Guggenheim Fellowship term, he will delve deeper into this multifaceted topic with a study of art, violence, and politics in contemporary Peru.
In addition to his positions at PUCP and IEP, Victor Vich has worked extensively with the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO); From 2007 to 2009 he was a member of CLACSO's board of directors. He is also an active member of New York University's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. He has directed or participated in numerous international conferences and was a visiting scholar at the David Rockefeller Center of Latin American Studies at Harvard University in 2007.