Research Interests for Esther Gabara

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

Current projects:

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

Representative Publications

1. Gabara, E, Errant Modernism: The Ethos of Photography in Mexico and Brazil, A John Hope Franklin Center Book (November, 2008), Duke University Press [ref=sr_1_1]
2. Gabara, EL, Fighting It Out: Being Naco in the Global Lucha Libre, Mexico Issue, vol. 26 (2010), pp. 277-300, The Wolfsonian-Florida International University [html]
3. Gabara, EL, Perspectives on Scale: From the Atomic to the Universal, in Art and Globalization, edited by Elkins, J; Kim, AS; Valiavicharska, Z (2010), pp. 200-204, Penn State Press [html]
4. Gabara, E, Gestures, Practices, and Projects: [Latin] American Re-visions of Visual Culture and Performance Studies, E-misférica, vol. 7 no. 1 (2010) [e-misferica-71]
5. Gabara, EL, Recycled Photographs: Moving Still Images of Mexico City, 1950/2000, in Double Exposure: Photography and Literature in Latin America, edited by Schwartz, M; Tierney-Tello, MB (2006), pp. 139-172, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press [ref=sr_1_1]
6. Gabara, EL, Modernist Ethics: Really Engaging Popular Culture in Mexico and Brazil, in The Ethics of Latin American Literary Criticism: Reading Otherwise, edited by Zivin, EG (2007), pp. 63-104, Palgrave MacMillan [ref=sr_1_1]
7. Gabara, EL, "Cannon and Camera": Photography and Colonialism in the Américas, ELN, vol. 44 no. 2 (Winter, 2006), pp. 45-64 [pdfviewer], [doi]
8. Gabara, EL, Facing Brazil: The Problem of Portraiture and a Modernist Sublime, CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 4 no. 2 (2004), pp. 33-76, Johns Hopkins University Press (Special issue entitled “Phosphorescent Memory: Visual Culture in the Americas”.) [html], [doi]
9. Gabara, EL, ’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 Süssekind, F; Dias, T (2004), pp. 169-190, Vieira e Lent/ Edições Casa de Rui Barbosa
10. Gabara, EL, La ciudad loca: An Epistemological Plan, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, vol. 9 no. 2 (2000), pp. 119-35 [doi]
11. Folgarait, L, Seeing Mexico Photographed: The Work of Horne, Casasola, Modotti, and Álvarez Bravo (Winter, 2011) [repository]