Esther Gabara, Faculty

Contact Info:

Office Location:	205 Lang Ctr
Office Phone:	(919) 660-3100, (919) 660-3112
Email Address:

Education:

PhD in Comparative Literature	Stanford	2001
MA in Comparative Literature	Stanford	1997
BA in Comparative Literature	University of Pennsylvania	1993

Specialties:

20th Century Latin American Visual Culture and Literature
Spanish
Theory & Criticism

Research Interests:

Current projects: "Non-Literary Fictions: Inventions and Interventions in Contemporary Latin American Art"

Esther Gabara received her PhD from Stanford University in 2001. Her main area of specialization is the relationship between literature and visual culture in modern and contemporary Latin America. Her research has examined photography in the Americas in terms of its impact on theories of ethics and aesthetics, the formulation of non-mainstream modernisms, and questions of race and gender. Her book, Errant Modernism: The Ethos of Photography in Mexico and Brazil, was published by Duke University Press in 2008. Her teaching in the departments of Romance Studies and Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University covers topics of Mexican visual culture and politics, Latin American modernisms, and contemporary urban cultural production in the Americas. She is currently working on a new book project on theories of fiction in contemporary artistic and popular visual culture, entitled "Non-Literary Fictions: Invention and Interventions in Contemporary Latin American Visual Culture."

Keywords:

Latin America • Visual Culture • Gender Studies • Modernism • Ethics and Aesthetics • Contemporary art • Theories of fiction

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. Esther Gabara, Errant Modernism: The Ethos of Photography in Mexico and Brazil, A John Hope Franklin Center Book (November, 2008), Duke University Press
2. “Fighting It Out: Being Naco in the Global Lucha Libre”, Mexico Issue, Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts., vol. 26 (Spring, 2009), The Wolfsonian-Florida International University
3. “I Swear She Is a Woman: Balmoreadas and Ethics in Drag.”, TDR: The Drama Review (2009)
4. Recycled Photographs: Moving Still Images of Mexico City, 1950/2000, in Double Exposure: Photography and Literature in Latin America, edited by Marcy Schwartz and Mary Beth Tierney-Tello (2006), pp. 139-172, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press
5. Modernist Ethics: Really Engaging Popular Culture in Mexico and Brazil, in The Ethics of Latin American Literary Criticism: Reading Otherwise, edited by Erin Graff Zivin (2007), pp. 63-104, Palgrave MacMillan
6. Facing Brazil: The Problem of Portraiture and a Modernist Sublime, CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 4 no. 2 (2004), pp. 33-76 (Special issue entitled “Phosphorescent Memory: Visual Culture in the Americas”.)
7. "Cannon and Camera": Photography and Colonialism in the Américas, ELN, vol. 44 no. 2 (Fall/Winter, 2006), pp. 45-64
8. “Perspectives on Scale: From the Atomic to the Universal”, in Globalization and Art, edited by James Elkins, Alice S. Kim, and Zhivka Valiavicharska (Accepted, 2009), Penn State Press
9. 'Nunca olhei tão olhado em minha vida e está sublime’: O (auto)retrato e a fotografia na obra de Mário de Andrade, in A Historiografia Literária e as Técnicas de Escrita. Do Manuscrito ao Hipertexto, edited by Flora Süssekind and Tânia Dias (2004), pp. 169-190, Vieira e Lent/ Edições Casa de Rui Barbosa

Selected Invited Talks

1. “Errant Landscapes: Mário de Andrade Surveys Brazil”, April 14, 2008, University of California, Berkeley    
2. “Fighting It Out: Being Naco in the Global Lucha Libre.”, February 15, 2008, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Los Angeles    
3. “Juro que es mujer: El increíble archivo fotográfico de Conchita Jurado y don Carlos Balmori.”, October 11, 2007, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM)-Cuajimalpa, Mexico City, Mexico.    
4. "What Women Do to and in the Casasola Archive, and What it Means About Mexican Photography Today", May 25, 2005, El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY.    

Selected Conference Talks

1. “Modernist Ethics: Really Engaging Popular Culture”, September 06, 2007, LASA (Latin American Studies Association) Convention    
2. “Incarnating Fiction, Dissecting Violence: Artur Barrio’s Livro de Carne”, October 13, 2006, Brazilian Studies Association, Vanderbilt University    
3. Obscuring Vision: Puerto Rican Marginality and Visual Culture, March 17, 2006, Latin American Studies Association. Puerto Rico.    
4. Arte acción— Acción histórica— Acción textual, April 01, 2005, Carolina Conference on Romance Literatures, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill    

Conferences Organized

• Panel co-organized: “Reconstituting the Politics of Art in Latin America: 1900- now.”, March 17, 2006  
• Romancing the Humanities: New Theories for Romance Studies, Co-organizer, 2003-04