Education:

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

Research Interests:

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."

1. Esther Gabara. Errant Modernism: The Ethos of Photography in Mexico and Brazil.  A John Hope Franklin Center Book Duke University Press, November, 2008.
2. "“Fighting It Out: Being Naco in the Global Lucha Libre”." Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts. Mexico Issue26 (Spring, 2009).
3. ""Cannon and Camera": Photography and Colonialism in the Américas." ELN 44:2 (Fall/Winter, 2006): 45-64.
4. "Facing Brazil: The Problem of Portraiture and a Modernist Sublime."  Special issue entitled “Phosphorescent Memory: Visual Culture in the Americas” CR: The New Centennial Review 4:2 (2004): 33-76.
5.  "Modernist Ethics: Really Engaging Popular Culture in Mexico and Brazil." The Ethics of Latin American Literary Criticism: Reading Otherwise Ed. Erin Graff Zivin. Palgrave MacMillan, 2007, 63-104.
6.  "Recycled Photographs: Moving Still Images of Mexico City, 1950/2000." Double Exposure: Photography and Literature in Latin America Ed. Marcy Schwartz and Mary Beth Tierney-Tello. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006, 139-172.
7.  "'Nunca olhei tão olhado em minha vida e está sublime’: O (auto)retrato e a fotografia na obra de Mário de Andrade." A Historiografia Literária e as Técnicas de Escrita. Do Manuscrito ao Hipertexto Ed. Flora Süssekind and Tânia Dias. Vieira e Lent/ Edições Casa de Rui Barbosa, 2004, 169-190.