Seeing in Spanish: From Don Quixote to Daddy Yankee—22 Essays on Hispanic Visual Cultures
Editor: Ryan Prout and Tilmann Altenberg
Date Of Publication: Jun 2011
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-2935-9
Isbn: 1-4438-2935-8
Seeing in Spanish brings together 22 chapters which share a focus on aspects of visual cultures from the Spanish speaking world. Together these chapters address film, photography, cover art, body art, posters, television, architecture, ekphrasis, biography, murals, graffiti, and digital photo-montage. Between Don Quixote and Daddy Yankee, the essays move from the seventeenth century to the present and traverse Europe, the Americas, and cyberspace.

The book is divided into five sections. The first of these, on Spain, includes chapters on the representation of women on LP covers in Spain in the 60s and 70s; portrayals in Spanish cinema of Saint Teresa; Luis Buñuel’s adaptation of Tristana; urban and rural space in recent Spanish documentary film; Catalan television; fine art in Don Quixote; and visions of adoption in three narratives by Spanish writers and filmmakers. The second section, on Mexico and Peru, includes chapters on the fragmentary body in images of Mexico; the art of Abraham Ángel; Jesús Ruiz Durand’s agrarian reform posters; Diego Rivera’s murals; and the role of artistic production in staging the 2006 Oaxaca conflict. The third section, on Cuba, looks at the portrayal of women and of children in recent cinema from the island. It also examines Nancy Morejón’s celebration of the life and art of exiled Cuban artist Ana Mendieta. Section four includes chapters on Chile and Argentina. It addresses street art and graffiti; new forms of publishing; Chilean cinema after Pinochet; and Violeta Parra’s appliqué and collage works. Section five embraces Colombia, Bolivia, and virtual spaces. The contributions to this last section of the book examine childhood in Colombian cinema; the online creativity of pro- and anti-fans of reggaeton; and the photographic diaries of T. Ifor Rees, the UK’s first ambassador to Bolivia. In addition to the geo-political structure which underpins the book’s five sections, the introduction suggests pathways through the contributions focussed on public art and graffiti, women, children, cyberspace and diplomacy, and reconstruction and disintegration.

Seeing in Spanish includes 50 illustrations—stills from films, photographs, reproductions of paintings, and screen grabs from the internet—which complement the chapters’ analyses of aspects of Hispanic visual cultures. To aid accessibility, footnotes throughout the book provide English translations of all references from texts in other languages. Taken together, the book’s 22 chapters make a valuable contribution to the existing literature on figures like Don Quixote and Saint Teresa. They also break new ground in approaches to novel areas of scholarship such as sleeve design, artisanal book production, and digital image manipulation. The book will appeal to students and scholars of Spain and Latin America as well as to a general readership with an interest in the visual cultures of the Spanish speaking world.

Ryan Prout is a graduate of the University of St Andrews. He completed his PhD at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and was a Research Lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. At Cardiff University’s School of European Studies he teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on film, literature, and translation. His recent publications have been on adoption and identity, disability in Spanish cinema, and on short films. His book on Hispanic cultural studies is forthcoming as is a journal dossier on endism in film from Europe and the Americas. His work has appeared in Third Text, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, TLS, Film International, and The Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies. He is a member of the advisory board for Film Matters.

Tilmann Altenberg is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Cardiff University and general editor of the journal New Readings. He has published widely on 19th- and 20th-century Spanish and Latin American literature, including a monograph on the Cuban-Mexican poet José María Heredia. His critical edition of Heredia's complete poetry is forthcoming (UNAM). He has co-edited a multi-disciplinary cross-media volume on Don Quijote and contributed two chapters of a volume on the European Picaresque Novel (La novela picaresca: Concepto genérico y evolución del género). Current research projects focus on executions during the Mexican Revolution and on the representations of the conscience in Hispanic literature and film.

“With the rise in interest in visual cultures worldwide in all their myriad forms, this volume could not be more timely. Wide-ranging in its scope, from urban graffiti to YouTube, this volume analyses Hispanic visual cultures, encompassing film, fine art, street art, album covers, posters, photography and cyberspace. It challenges received ideas and familiar monolithic stereotypes of Hispanic culture, emphasising instead that the visual cultures of Spain and Latin America are in a process of reconstruction, refashioning and dissolution, in dialogue with themselves and with other cultures. This book is an essential expansion of the field, offering a kaleidoscope of fresh perspectives on Hispanic visual cultures.”

—Dr Ann Davies, Senior Lecturer in Spanish, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University

“Seeing in Spanish is an inspired compilation that takes the fields of Spanish and Latin American Studies in exciting new directions. Exploring the Hispanic world through its visual representations, it brings into focus far-reaching questions about the impact of film, public art and cyber-culture in this context and beyond. Grouped thematically rather than by chronology or geography, essays on topics as wide-ranging as Violeta Parra’s embroidery, Spanish films of transnational adoption and Daddy Yankee’s anti-fans offer fascinating perspectives on a world that is insistently supranational even as local histories loom large. ‘Seeing in Spanish’, this compilation implies, means engaging with a dynamic culture of improvisation but also with practices of thoughtful recycling, be these screen reinventions of Teresa de Avila or books crafted from used materials. This book maps a field for the twenty-first century; it will change the way we think about, and visualize, the world of Spanish.”

—Esther Whitfield, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Brown University

Price Uk Gbp: 49.99
Price Us Usd: 74.99

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