RESEARCH INTERESTS AND PUBLICATIONS
Journal Publications
Academic Publications
My research focuses on the modern and contemporary cultural production of Argentina, Brazil and Chile. With a special emphasis on film and visual culture, I consistently explore three innovative analytical methodologies that engage the field of Latin American Cultural studies as follows:
1) by probing and outlining how the analysis of cultural constructions of space and spatial practices can form the basis for a critical understanding of discourses about identity and modernity,
2) by tracing new directions for the analysis of the connections between culture and economics, particularly focusing on the relations between visual culture and concepts of social and economic development,
3) by outlining continuities from which to reinterpret national film histories, also linking documentary cinema’s modes of production of knowledge to specific discursive practices.
América invertida, Joaquín Torres-García, Uruguay, 1943.
In addition to my published work, I am working on projects that continue to flesh out my research agenda, as I am currently co-editing a special journal issue on "Development and dependency" as a prism for cultural analysis in/of Latin America. I am also co-editor of a book manuscript on the cinema and aesthetics of Arturo Ripstein. Additionally, I am exploring new directions for critical inquiry and pedagogical practices in connection to migration across Mexico, the US and Canada. One such project involves the preparation of a French version of Mexican poet Hugo García Manríquez' "Anti-Humboldt", a Spanish-English language poem written solely from the text of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
​
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
“Espacio fílmico, posicionamiento y dimensión social: Propuestas para un análisis cultural de los cines de Brasil e Hispanoamérica.” Hispanófila (vademécum del cine iberoamericano: métodos y teorías. Eds. Eugenia Afinoguenova, Samuel Amago and Kathryn Everly), 177 (Jun. 2016).
​
“Materialidad y memoria del trabajo productivo en el cine documental argentino de los 2000.” In Lillo, Gastón (ed.), Sujetos, espacios y temporalidades del cine argentino reciente. A veinte años del NCA. NY: Legas, 2015.
​
“Contesting the optic of (under-)development: Tire dié and the emergence of documentary cinema in Argentina, ca. 1958.” Social Identities, in the special issue “Political Documentary Cinema in Latin America: Concepts, Histories, Experiences,” 19.3-4 (2013).
Reprinted in: Antonio Traverso and Kristi Wilson, eds. Political Documentary Cinema in Latin America: Concepts, Histories, Experiences. London, UK: Routledge, 2014.
​
“Memoria espacializada y arqueología del presente en el cine de Patricio Guzmán.” Cine documental. 8 (2013).
​
“Notas para una lectura arqueológica del cine documental: producción de conocimiento y lógicas espaciales en el documental argentino de mediados del siglo pasado.” In Francisco Montaña, ed. ¿Cómo se piensa el cine latinoamericano? Aparatos epistemológicos, herramientas, líneas, fugas e intentos. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2011.
“A sertão of migrants, flight and affect: genealogies of place and image in the Cinema Novo and contemporary Brazilian cinema.” Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, special issue edited by Ana M. López: “Geographical imaginaries,” 7.1 (2010).
“Place-making as negative labour: a review essay of Gastón Gordillo’s Landscapes of Devils. Tensions of Place and Memory in the Argentinean Chaco.” In Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 17.3 (2008).
TEACHING AND PRESENTATIONS
In addition to regularly participating as presenter and panel organizer at the main professional conferences in my field, including the Latin American Studies Association, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the American Comparative Literature Association, I have taught classes at the graduate and undergraduate levels on a variety of topics including Latin American Cinema and Culture, Latin American Literature, and Critical and Literary Theory. Throughout my teaching career, I have developed a methodology that encourages students to simultaneously consider the aesthetic specificities of Latin American cultural production of all periods and its social dimension.
The selected invited talks and organized panels below illustrate how I fruitfully channel my research in the classroom. I welcome invitations to give your students a talk, by videochat or in person!
​
“Spatial critique: Researching on Film studies and Latin American Cultural studies” (via Skype)
“Exploring Hispanic Cultures” undergraduate research seminar, University of Western Ontario, Oct. 2015.
​
Co-organizer and convener of the special session “Ayotzinapa” at the Tepoztlán Institute for the Transnational History of the Americas, including fundraiser and screening of the documentary film "Ayotzinapa. Crónica de un crimen de estado" and Q&A with film’s director and producer, July 24, 2015.
​
Co-organizer and convener with R. Diego Rivera Hernández of “A Teach-in: Understanding Contemporary Mexico through the Lens of Social Struggles and State Violence” within the “Global Forum: Mexico: Wound of the World,” November 24th, 2014.
Discussant for EthnoCuba (facebook)’s book club on Juan Carlos Rodríguez’ manuscript “La Habana en la pantalla: Imaginarios urbanos y dilemas culturales de la Cuba pos-soviética en el documental,” July 9-14th, 2014.
​
“The Developmentalist Optic and Documentary Cinema in Argentina, Brazil and Chile”
Graduate Research Seminar, Sverdlin Institute for Latin American History and Culture, Tel Aviv University, Nov. 2013.
“Discursividades desarrollistas y cine documental argentino en los años 50"
Seminar “Historia del cine latinoamericano y argentino,” Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, May 2011.
“Critical contexts of Brazilian cinema and society in relation to Fernando Meirelles’ Cidade de Deus (2002)”
Graduate course “Cross-cultural perspectives in film,” University of South Carolina, Spring 2010.