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Research and Innovation

Research in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures is interdisciplinary and vibrant. 

Faculty and graduate students pursue research in numerous fields of study.

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The Fiction of Solidarity: Transfronterista Feminisms and Anti-Imperialist Struggles in Central American Transnational Narratives

This essay examines a corpus of Chicana/Latina feminist solidarity literature and the production of “solidarity fictions” from a U.S. Central American standpoint.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Ana Patricia Rodríguez
Dates:

This essay revisits the production of Chicana/Latina feminist narratives identified with anti-imperialist struggles and hemispheric solidarity movements in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s. Through their texts, transfronterista feminists such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Ana Castillo, Carole Fernández, Graciela Limón, Demetria Martínez, Cherrie Moraga, Lourdes Portillo, Nina Serrano, Alma Villanueva, and Helena María Viramontes, among others, not only challenged U.S. hegemony in the Western hemisphere, but also resisted the enforcement of multiple borders across the Americas.'' In the process, they transnationalized Chicana/Latina struggles, histories, discourses, and feminisms beyond the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. However, their transfronterista feminist logic and anti-colonial imperative, while appealing to transnational Third World feminist struggles and affinities, produced a "fiction of solidarity" predicated on Chicana/Mexicana subjectivities. Examining the production of many of these solidarity fictions, and especially Portillo and Serrano's film, “After the Earthquake,” and Martinez's semi-autobiographical novel, Mother Tongue, this essay seeks to shift the primary focus of Chicana/o resistance, resilience, and hybrid borderizations that has shaped many Chicana/Latina narratives about the wars in Central America and to rethink transfronterista alliances and narratives in the Americas from a Central American subjective location.

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Entre alambradas y exilios. Sangrías de las Españas y terapias de Vichy" [Between Barbed Wire and Exile. Spanish Sangrías and Vichy Therapies]

How are historical memories and Republican exiles of the Spanish Civil War displayed?

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: José María Naharro-Calderón
Dates: -
Publisher: Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva
Entre alambradas y exilios. Sangrías de las Españas y terapias de Vichy" [Between Barbed Wire and Exile. Spanish Sangrías and Vichy Therapies]

"Entre alambradas y exilios. Sangrías de las Españas y terapias de Vichy" [Between Barbed Wire and Exile. Spanish Sangrías and Vichy Therapies] by José María Naharro-Calderón, Professor of Spanish Literature, Iberian Cultures & Exile Studies at the University of Maryland, discusses the complex historical memories that surround the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) exile narratives around concentration camps, identity and political confrontations. They resurface again through planetary violences and diasporas, populisms, post-truths, brexit, elections in the USA, or constitutional challenges in Spain (Catalonia, Basque Country.) This detailed study explores diasporas and concentration camp experiences reflected in essay and literary contributions (Celso Amieva, Manuel Andújar, Max Aub, Otilia Castellví, Eugenio Ímaz, Eulalio Ferrer, 1956 Literature Nobel recipient and UM Professor Juan Ramón Jiménez, Silvia Mistral, Mercè Rodoreda, Jorge Semprún, etc.,) image and film (Mario Camus, María Luisa Elío, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Jomí García Ascot, Agustí Villaronga,) comic books (Manuel Altarriba, Josep Bartolí, Kim, Paco Roca,) and photography (Robert Capa, Agustí Centelles, Manuel Moros, Gerda Taro.) It also studies kitsch best sellers (Javier Cercas, Arturo Pérez Reverte, Andrés Trapiello), and the democratic contradictions that lead to freedoms suppressions and concentration camps, such as in 1939 France, as well as the pending questions of Francoist memories: "The Uncivil Mountain" or the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid. Last but not least, it evaluates Spain’s Transition to democracy and today’s terrorist and nationalist challenges, paving the debate away from ineffective Vichy type therapies and/or Spanish sangrías.

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The Economy of Human Relations: Castiglione's Libro del Cortegiano

This book offers a modern critical approach to the study of Baldesar Castiglione's Libro del Cortegiano.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Dates:
The Economy of Human Relations: Castiglione's Libro del Cortegiano
Thoroughly based on a close reading of the primary sources (including the often neglected early versions of the treatise), this book challenges the traditional notion of Il Cortegiano as an abstract work of art. Through a careful analysis of the structural changes and thematic developments that occur in the treatise, this book shows that the primary object of Il Libro del Cortegiano is to describe the ways in which despotism exerts its power and influence within the court under the veil of figurative language.

España y la costa atlántica de los EE.UU. Cuatro personajes del siglo XVI en busca de autor.

El periodo que aquí se estudia abarca desde 1520 hasta 1572, gira en torno a las primeras colonias fundadas en Norteamérica que fueron las de Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón y Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Carmen Benito-Vessels
Dates:
Publisher: New York: Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española.
España y la costa atlántica de los EE.UU. Cuatro personajes del siglo XVI en busca de autor.
El periodo que aquí se estudia abarca desde 1520 hasta 1572, gira en torno a las primeras colonias fundadas en Norteamérica que fueron las de Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón y Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.

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La palabra en el tiempo de las letras: una historia heterodoxa

Esta obra se tiende un puente entre la filosofia clasica, la tradicion judeocristiana y la filosofia contemporanea.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Carmen Benito-Vessels
Dates:
Publisher: Fondo De Cultura Economica USA
La palabra en el tiempo de las letras: una historia heterodoxa
Esta obra se tiende un puente entre la filosofia clasica, la tradicion judeocristiana y la filosofia contemporanea. La autora muestra que en toda epoca ha habido una veneracion por la palabra que permite identificar el ser de la lengua y el ser del hombre. El ensayo estudia la lengua como ser-en un sentido orteguiano y en su manifestacion ontologica-a traves de la literatura espanola, desde la Edad Media hasta nuestros dias. Partiendo de una solida base filologica, Benito-Vassels ve el discurso como una forma de vida y considera, a su vez, la vida como un discurso textual o palimpsesto, en el que se inserta el ser del hablante. Aqui se nos ofrece una historia heterodoxa del espanol en la que Dios y los academicos estan en la misma pagina y en la que la judeidad-diferente del judaismo-se revela como elemento esencial en el espanol.

Special Educators and Spanish

This chapter explores diverse aspects of learning disabilities (LD) in English Language Learners (ELLs), such as the nature of LD, the need for bilingual special educators and suitable teacher certification, and best instructional practices.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Roberta Z. Lavine
Dates:
Publisher: New York: Routledge

Among current educational challenges are an increasing number of English Language Learners (ELLs) and a lack of bilingual special educators adequately prepared in the areas of bilingualism, cultural diversity and disability. This chapter begins by exploring learning disabilities (LD) in ELLs, the nature of LD and the need for bilingual special educators. It next considers research on the lack of appropriate assessments, disproportionality of ELLs in special education, and best instructional practices. It ends by looking at future issues such as appropriate teacher certification, new uses of technology and college age students and adults with learning disabilities. Lavine, R. Z. & Goode, C. “Special Educators and Spanish”. Ed. Manel Lacorte. In The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics, New York: Routledge, 2015: 438-456.

Joy, Melancholy, and The Promise of Happiness in Xavier Dolan’s Mommy (2014)

Published in the book ReFocus: The Films of Xavier Dolan, this book chapter examines the tension between joy and melancholy that traverses Dolan’s film, Mommy, through the lens of queer theory, psychoanalysis, and affect.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Mercedes Baillargeon
Dates:
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

This film describes the complicated relationship in an improbable “family,” alternating between moments of strong connections in the midst of struggles, and moments when fits of rage, anger, and passion re-actualize a sense of loss and “never quite making it.” The chapter also discusses the idea of “normalcy,” based on Michael Warner’s work The Trouble with normal, by examining how it relates to the coming-of-age narrative, and demonstrates how failure, and ambivalence on a personal, relational level as depicted in Mommy can also translate a collective sentiment about contemporary Québec, and the world we live in. Full reference: “Joy, Melancholy, and The Promise of Happiness in Xavier Dolan’s Mommy (2014),” ReFocus: The Films of Xavier Dolan, ed. Andrée Lafontaine, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp. 177-190.

What Does It Mean Today to Be a Communist?’ Nanni Moretti’s Palombella rossa and La cosa as Essay Films

With its increasing presence in a continuously evolving media environment, the essay film as a visual form raises new questions about the construction of the subject, its relationship to the world, and the aesthetic possibilities of cinema.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Mauro Resmini
Dates:
Publisher: Wallflower Press
What Does It Mean Today to Be a Communist?’ Nanni Moretti’s Palombella rossa and La cosa as Essay Films

With its increasing presence in a continuously evolving media environment, the essay film as a visual form raises new questions about the construction of the subject, its relationship to the world, and the aesthetic possibilities of cinema. In this volume, authors specializing in various national cinemas (Cuban, French, German, Israeli, Italian, Lebanese, Polish, Russian, American) and critical approaches (historical, aesthetic, postcolonial, feminist, philosophical) explore the essay film and its consequences for the theory of cinema while building on and challenging existing theories. Taking as a guiding principle the essay form's dialogic, fluid nature, the volume examines the potential of the essayistic to question, investigate, and reflect on all forms of cinema—fiction film, popular cinema, and documentary, video installation, and digital essay. A wide range of filmmakers are covered, from Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera, 1928), Chris Marker (Description of a Struggle, 1960), Nicolás Guillén Landrián (Coffea Arábiga, 1968), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Notes for an African Oresteia, 1969), Chantal Akerman (News from Home, 1976) and Jean-Luc Godard (Notre musique, 2004) to Nanni Moretti (Palombella Rossa, 1989), Mohammed Soueid (Civil War, 2002), Claire Denis (L'Intrus, 2004) and Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life, 2011), among others. The volume argues that the essayistic in film—as process, as experience, as experiment—opens the road to key issues faced by the individual in relation to the collective, but can also lead to its own subversion, as a form of dialectical thought that gravitates towards crisis.

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Obscurity, Anthologized: Non-Relation and Enjoyment in Love and Anger (1969)

1968 and Global Cinema addresses a notable gap in film studies. The essays in this volume cover a breadth of cinematic movements that were part of the era's radical politics and independence movements.

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Author/Lead: Mauro Resmini
Non-ARHU Contributor(s):

Edited By Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi

Dates:
Publisher: Wayne State University Press

1968 and Global Cinema addresses a notable gap in film studies. Although scholarship exists on the late 1950s and 1960s New Wave films, research that puts cinemas on 1968 into dialogue with one another across national boundaries is surprisingly lacking. Only in recent years have histories of 1968 begun to consider the interplay among social movements globally. The essays in this volume, edited by Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi, cover a breadth of cinematic movements that were part of the era's radical politics and independence movements. Focusing on history, aesthetics, and politics, each contribution illuminates conventional understandings of the relationship of cinema to the events of 1968, or "the long Sixties."

Asymmetries of Desire: Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom

What does it mean to proclaim something “unwatchable”: disturbing, revolting, poor, tedious, or literally inaccessible?

School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Dates:
Publisher: New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press

We all have images that we find unwatchable, whether for ethical, political, or sensory and affective reasons. From news coverage of terror attacks to viral videos of police brutality, and from graphic horror films to transgressive artworks, many of the images in our media culture might strike us as unsuitable for viewing. Yet what does it mean to proclaim something “unwatchable”: disturbing, revolting, poor, tedious, or literally inaccessible? With over 50 original essays by leading scholars, artists, critics, and curators, this is the first book to trace the “unwatchable” across our contemporary media environment, in which viewers encounter difficult content on various screens and platforms. Appealing to a broad academic and general readership, the volume offers multidisciplinary approaches to the vast array of troubling images that circulate in global visual culture.