I have been writing about violence and subjectivity for my forthcoming monograph. This led me to reflect on the value placed on a life and how significant a fully realised representation is. It may seem obvious to say, but individual lives can become invisible when the numbers of victims grow. Therefore, acknowledging the subjectivity of…
Category: blog
Mediático – Dara and Ed’s (Not So) Great Big Adventure
My recent contribution to Mediático, “Dara and Ed’s (Not so) Great Big Adventure”, reflects on Irish comedians, Dara O’Briain and Ed Byrne’s journey from Arizona to Panama City, which was recently broadcast on Irish and British terrestrial television. They follow a similar trail made in the 1940s by Sullivan C. Richardson and two of his friends, which frames…
Who is Elena Garro?
Elena Garro (1916-1998) is a writer whose career has been over-shadowed by her tumultuous relationship with her one-time husband Octavio Paz. I wrote about her novel Los recuerdos del porvenir (first published in 1963 and translated into English by Ruth L. Simms as Recollections of Things to Come) in my first book. Los recuerdos del porvenir is an…
A brief introduction to Jean Franco
At the Latin American Studies Association last year in Washington I met Jean Franco. Born in Manchester, she was a pioneering scholar who has become one of the foremost cultural theorists in Latin American Studies. She has written on multiple literary forms (poetry, short story, testimonio, novels, etc), television, journalistic writing and multiple other forms…
Screen Violence: A Conversation
The following conversation took play via Skype instant messaging on the 7th February 2014. This took place as a way of expanding on our blogs on screen violence. [09:42:41] Niamh: In your blog I was really interested in the shared use of the media as a motif. In Pacific Rim TV news is used as…
Screen Violence: A Reflection
I recently blogged about how war photographs are used as a way of efficient storytelling in a Portuguese film (http://www.niamhthornton.net/death-on-film-how-far-can-you-go/). In response to that I had some interesting discussions on Twitter and a decision with Fiona Noble to write blog posts on our shared interest in screen violence. In the process of writing we have…
Death on Film: How far can you go?
I rarely blog about non-Mexican or non-Mexican-related films except when really moved to do so. I recently saw a film whose opening sequence has haunted and disturbed me and need to write down my thoughts. Capitães de Abril [April Captains] (2000) is by the well-known Portuguese actress Maria de Medeiros. Her long career has included…
Music, stars and racialised bodies
Today, I am going to Maynooth to give a paper called “Who Made You the Centre of the Universe? Stardom and Racialized Bodies on the Borderland” to a group of Masters’ students and staff at the Hispanic studies department. The title is inspired by a line from a Laura Mvula song, “That’s Alright”. In this…
The “War on Drugs” and its victims
The “war on drugs” gets inverted commas because otherwise it becomes normalised and this phrase, burdened by a terrible history tainted by the blood of many, can be in danger of sounding neutral and even positive otherwise. It has largely been played out in the US and Latin America but can be glimpsed in the different…
Remember Them Exhibition and 5TH E. ALLISON PEERS SYMPOSIUM. Remember Them: Artistic and Academic responses to Femicide in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
I have been wearing pink for a week. Often considered a weak colour, condemned as symbolic of the rigid gender binaries being fomented by the marketplace to sell consumer goods to young girls, when thinking about Juárez it means something else. It was first used as a warning sign for women that certain areas were…