Alfredo Poggi, Ph.D.

Alfredo Poggi’s interdisciplinary research explores the intersections of Latin American & Hispanic culture, philosophy, and theology, with particular interests in religion and secularization, popular religiosity, mysticism, political ideology, and history of ideas. Drawing on literature, philosophy, and theology, his work examines how narratives, religious experience, and popular culture can offer alternative ways of understanding human existence, community, transcendence, and social reality.

• Ph.D. Candidate, Theology, Universidad Católica de Córdoba, expected 2027
• Ph.D., Spanish and Portuguese Literature & Cultural Studies, Georgetown University, 2018
• M.S., Spanish and Portuguese Literature & Cultural Studies, Georgetown University, 2016
• MTS, Theology, Boston College, 2013
• M.A., Philosophy, Univ. Católica Andrés Bello, 2011
• B.A., Media Studies, Univ. Católica Andrés Bello, 2005

Books

Marianismo: A philosophy of life amid the epidemic of loneliness. Bloomsbury. (forthcoming 2027).

This book reevaluates a fundamental concept in Hispanic and Latin American studies, Marianismo, and reinterprets it not as a negative social script for Latina women, but as a profound philosophy of life, inspired by the Virgin Mary, what we might call storgosophy, for men and women alike. Drawing on philosophical frameworks developed by thinkers such as Pierre Hadot, Peter Sloterdijk, Peter Kreeft, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Carrie Gress, and Byung-Chul Han; on patristic, medieval, and modern theology; and on literary and cinematic works such as One Hundred Years of Solitude, Children of Men, and Babel, this project articulates a philosophy that involves a way of being in the world and pursuing a specific path toward wisdom and happiness, with maternal and family love (storge) as its driving force. However, it also aims to universalize that love, transforming it into an agape love for all humanity and creation, and it does so through Rahimim (mercy, compassion, and tenderness in Hebrew). In addition, Marianismo seeks to create existential spheres (wombs) where life is protected, people form emotional bonds, and meaning is created. Ultimately, the storgosophy of Marianismo could offer a solution to the growing epidemic of loneliness affecting the West and Westernized countries like South Korea and Japan, which leads to millions of cases of depression, addiction, and suicide each year.

Magical Realism, Latin American Theology, and the Appearance of a Pre-Critical Theory. Mary versus Ideology. Bloomsbury Books, 2024.

This work explores why the greatest boom of Marian apparitions in history, related by poor rural women and children, occurred simultaneously with the rise of urban elites’ secularizing ideologies – and often in the same countries. The uniqueness of my research lies first in demonstrating how behind the simple stories and symbols of the Marian apparitions lies a critique of the modern and postmodern social imaginary that gave life to innumerable ideologies. Additionally, following the premises of liberation theology and magical realism, this work shows how popular religion – with its mythical-narrative nucleus – is a space of resistance against the totalizing projects of modernity; therefore, its articulations should be studied not as merely irrational and folkloric but as coherent and reasoned. Herein lies the second singular feature of my work: it uses Latin American hermeneutic lenses (magical realism and liberation theology) to study a global historical reality. Finally, over the course of its analysis of the Marian apparitions, this work identifies a theory of reality, which it calls Pre-Critical Theory. Modern proposals, such as the Marxist or poststructuralist ones, argue that one must use critical thinking to evade or at least expose ideologies. This manuscript, on the contrary, maintains that a “naïve” and “enchanted” perception of the world – like that of the poor children and women who witnessed the Marian apparitions – is the best starting point not only for understanding the phenomenon of popular religion but for challenging contemporary ideologies, since it arises from another social imaginary altogether.

Lope de Aguirre, Hugo Chávez, and the Latin American Left: The Wrath of Liberation. Bloomsbury Books. 2020.

This book examines why anti-imperialist projects have the tendency to become tyrannies, with a focus on Latin America. Alfredo Ignacio Poggi discusses the figure of Lope de Aguirre, the first modern revolutionary leader, and his various historical representations in literature, essays, theater, film, and comics as a vehicle to interrogate the Latin American anti-imperialist imagination. Poggi argues that the experience of anger is a constituent element of Latin American anti-imperialism and that the social imaginary that emerged in the late nineteenth century – following the intellectual tradition of liberation and the continental political left – has a wrathful dimension capable of generating political programs of revenge, finding an echo in Latin American leaders like Che Guevara and Hugo Chávez. Poggi ultimately proposes to renovate liberationist thinking by offering mercy as an alternative anti-imperialist emotion that can overcome the dangers implicit in anger’s radicalization as wrath.

Book Chapter

“Liberation Theology: History, Concepts, and Critiques” In Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics in Latin America, edited by Dennis P. Petri. 2026.

Selected Articles

Ignacio de Loyola, la teología de la liberación y la opción preferencial por los pobres: La misión pedagógica jesuita en Latinoamérica y la transformación de la educación popular. A Contracorriente: una revista de estudios latinoamericanos. Vol. 37, n.2.

Narratives of Christian Democracy: Six Characters in Search of an Ideology in Trotsky y La Marilyn by Genaro Arriagada Herrera. Confluencia. 37.2. Spring, 2022. University of Northern Colorado, US

“¿Existió el Jesús histórico?: Jean Baudrillard, hiperrealismo y el gnosticismo virtual en la edad del simulacro.” Teología y Cultura. Universidad del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos / Instituto Wesley, Argentina.

"The Opium of God’s People: Latin American/Hispanic Theology, Popular Religiosity, and the Challenge of Narcotrafficking". Theology Today. 2020.

"A Southern Gothic Theology: Flannery O´Connor and Her Religious Conception of the Novel".Theologica Xaveriana, vol. 70. 2020.

"Hacia una teoría literaria post-secular: Repensando la crítica liberal de la religión a través de Flora Tristán, Paul Gauguin y Vargas Llosa en El paraíso en la otra esquina". Pasavento. Review of Hispanic Studies, vol. VIII. n.1. 2020.

"¿Dios existe? El argumento existencialista de Hans Küng y su humanismo cristiano". Teología y Cultura, 21. 2019.

“Francisco, el Papa anti-populista y el péndulo de Laclau en tiempos de Trump, Maduro y Bolsonaro”. Revista SIC. Feb. 2019. Centro Gumilla: Investigación y Acción Jesuita, Venezuela.

"Filosofía y el giro post/decolonial: Aportes y peligros”. Lógoi. Revista de Filosofía. Nº34. 2019.

"El fin del deseo y el comienzo de la unión con Dios: Conexiones entre La Celestina y la literatura mística del siglo XVI a través del psicoanálisis”. Celestinesca, 42. 2018.

"Los primeros libros del Río de la Plata, una resistencia simbólica impresa con yerba mate en las misiones jesuíticas guaraníes”. Dieciocho, 40 (2). 2017.

"San Juan de la Cruz, Lacan y Kristeva, una fuga nocturna de lo simbólico a través de la poesía mística en el Cántico espiritual”. Hispanic Poetry Review, 11. 2016.

"La poesía de Ernesto Cardenal y su misticismo político. Una experiencia fronteriza en su Cántico Cósmico”. Ciberletras. 2016.

"El realismo mágico y la teología de la liberación: Una agenda en común frente a los discursos europeos de secularización y secularismo”. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 5 (2). 2015. 72–92.

"De lo etnográfico a lo teológico-político: investigación-acción ecuménica de La Rosca en las comunidades protestantes de Córdoba, Colombia”. Tabula Rasa, 23. 2015.

"Colonización española y tres perspectivas teológicas sobre cultura y fe cristiana”. Lógoi. Revista de Filosofía. Nº25. 2014.

"San Juan de la Cruz y el acto de narrar en tiempos de agorafobia”. Lógoi. Revista de Filosofía. Nº24. 2013.

Technology Management and the Evangelical Church by John Weaver. Revista de Comunicación, Sept. 2025.

From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural by Lynn Schofield Clark. Revista SIC. April. 2022.

Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States by Massimo Faggioli. Revista SIC. Feb. 2021.

Introducing Theological Method. A Survey of Contemporary Theologians and Approaches by Mary M. Veeneman, Perspectiva Teológica, Brazil, v. 51, n. 3, Sep./Dec. 2019. 601-603. 

Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-century Church by George Weigel. Revista SIC. May 2014. 184-185.

Theory at a glance by Barbara Rimer and Karen Glanz. Temas de Comunicación 19, Fall 2009,180-183.

Dr. Alfredo Poggi is married with two children. He enjoys playing with his children, watching soccer, listening to podcasts, reading books, and playing the guitar. Related to his love for music, he has even spent many years as part of a rock-band with a few radio hits in Latin America. Lastly, Dr. Poggi has been very involved in Christian non-profit organizations that promote and support low-income families, both in Latin America and the United States.