Nayeli Riano is a Ph.D. Candidate in political theory in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. She researches the legacy of Enlightenment thought in Latin America and the development of Latin American political thought. Her dissertation, “A Mirror of Modernity: Revisiting Civilization and Barbarism,” analyzes the conceptual impact and creative reconstruction of the Enlightenment political discourse on “civilization” and “barbarism” in Latin American political thought during the long nineteenth century. Within this period, Nayeli integrates the region’s crucial stages of colonialism, wars of independence, nation-building, and industrialization with its social and political thought.

Beyond her dissertation project, Nayeli also researches and writes on the relationship between political thought and literature, aesthetics, history and historiography, and civil war. Working primarily with Spanish, Portuguese, English and French texts, Nayeli is interested in understanding the confluence of ideas in these varied linguistic and intellectual traditions.

Prior to attending Georgetown, Nayeli studied intellectual history at the University of St Andrews (MLitt) and English literature at the University of Pennsylvania (BA).