Brendan Lanctot, professor of Hispanic studies at the , has been by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Nineteenth Century Section for his chapter, “Civic Festivals, Popular Spectacles, and the Art of Drawing Republics.” He earned an Honorable Mention from the organization, highlighting Lanctot’s innovative exploration of how 19th-century public spectacles shaped political identities in Latin America.
Published in The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Nineteenth-Century Latin America (2024), Lanctot’s work explores the role of festivals, popular entertainment, and visual culture in shaping public understanding of citizenship following independence from Spain.
In his chapter, Lanctot looks at how different ways of exhibiting and seeing images—particularly backlit, transparent paintings used in civic festivals, commercial venues such as panoramas and dioramas—helped spectators see themselves as participants in the formation of the modern nations that emerged from the Spanish Empire. He argues that these shared experiences organized new ways of seeing—and being seen—that brought people together and gave them a sense of belonging to a larger political community.
“This project started with a simple question: How do you make a ‘people’ out of a crowd?” Lanctot said. “I found that the answer wasn’t just in laws or speeches, but in spectacles, advertisements, and even failed inventions—the kinds of things traditional histories of nation-building gloss over or ignore.”
Lanctot combines literary analysis with extensive archival research, uncovering overlooked materials such as newspaper advertisements for “cosmoramas,” picture galleries where spectators looked through viewfinders at landscapes enhanced with magnifying lenses and special lighting techniques. Other sources include the pamphlets of poems, published in Colombia and Ecuador in the 1870s, dedicated to the photograph projector of a traveling showman from New Jersey. He also discovered, in the National Archive of Mexico, a series of proposals and blueprints for a massive rotating theater, originally approved to be part of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Unlike the Ferris Wheel, another circular machine for moving masses, this “Optical Voyage” was never constructed, but the idea continued to circulate in the Mexican press for another three decades. This persistence, Lanctot argues, exemplifies how Latin American societies employed diversions to make sense of emerging, modern ideas and ways of life.
“These spectacles weren’t just entertainment,” he said. “They were rehearsals for democracy, teaching people how to see themselves as part of a collective.”
The LASA Nineteenth Century Section is a leading forum for scholars of Latin America. The group praised Lanctot’s work for its “originality and interdisciplinary reach.” His research also informs his teaching at Puget Sound, including courses on visual culture where students analyze historical images alongside contemporary media.
“There’s a direct line from 19th-century panoramas to today’s virtual and augmented reality,” Lanctot said. “When we study the past, we’re really asking ‘How do we keep reimagining our place in the world?’”
In his course, SPAN 312 - Visual Culture and Modernity in Latin America, Lanctot connects historical and contemporary visual practices. His students combine theoretical readings with photographs from museums they visited or create their own cartes de visite—19th-century-style portrait cards—to explore how visual forms influence our perception of the world and our self-perception. Lanctot notes that one of his students created a sepia self-portrait that parodied bourgeois aspirations, while another challenged historical stereotypes by posing defiantly with the Virgen de Guadalupe.
“These assignments reveal how visual culture continues to mediate our sense of self and community,” he said.
Lanctot is currently completing a book expanding on these themes, with support from a Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and archival research in Mexico and Colombia.
LASA is the world’s largest professional organization for scholars of Latin America, with more than 12,000 members worldwide. Its Nineteenth Century Section recognizes outstanding contributions to the field, selected by a panel of experts.
Lanctot’s research was initially delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted travel plans to South America. However, with support from colleagues and archivists in Colombia and Ecuador, he was able to continue his work.
“I’m grateful to my colleagues and the archivists who helped me piece this together,” Lanctot said. “It’s a reminder that even the margins of history have stories to tell.”
