Gothic Imagination in Latin American Fiction and Film
Carmen Serrano, University of Albany
Thursday, October 07, 2021 | 02:00 pm
Virtual
About:
This work traces how Gothic imagination from the literature and culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and twentieth-century US and European film has impacted Latin American literature and film culture. Serrano argues that the Gothic has provided Latin American authors with a way to critique a number of issues, including colonization, authoritarianism, feudalism, and patriarchy. The book includes a literary history of the European Gothic to demonstrate how Latin American authors have incorporated its characteristics but also how they have broken away or inverted some elements, such as traditional plot lines, to suit their work and address a unique set of issues. The book examines both the modernistas of the nineteenth century and the avant-garde writers of the twentieth century, including Huidobro, Bombal, Rulfo, Roa Bastos, and Fuentes. Looking at the Gothic in Latin American literature and film, this book is a groundbreaking study that brings a fresh perspective to Latin American creative culture.
Carmen Serrano is an Associate Professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York. As a scholar of twentieth and twenty-first Latin American, Mexican and U.S. Latinx literature and culture, she analyzes the ways in which literature and films manifest monstrous, spectral and non-normative bodies. Some of her publications that reflect these themes include: Gothic Imagination in Latin American Fiction and Film (University of New Mexico Press 2019); “Mapping the Zombie: Diego Velázquez Betancourt’s Newfangled Zombie in La noche que asolaron Tokio.” (Romance Notes 2018); “Duplicitous Vampires Annihilating Tradition in Froylán Turcios’s El vampiro.” (Routledge 2018); “Gallo-Gallina: Gender Performance and the Androgynous Imagination in Elena Poniatowska’s Hasta no verte Jesús mío.” (Routledge 2017); and “Revamping Dracula on the Mexican Silver Screen in Fernando Méndez’s El vampiro.” (University Press of Mississippi 2016).
Notes:
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