I don’t normally write anything that is not directly related to my research area, but the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a trope that has caught my attention over the last couple of years. Here, Dominic Kelly writing in The Guardian describes the character as “a recurring trope in the romantic genre, [who] are…
Category: blog
Edward Saïd On Orientalism
I came across this video http://vimeo.com/14326780 today on a listserv. It’s an interview with Edward Saïd framed by an academic introduction to his work and uses a very interesting montage of images to establish its argument at the beginning. It is by Global Information Services, about whom you can find out more here: http://www.gisfilms.org/about.htm, whose “primary…
Bardem in Bond
Joint Blog Post with Fiona Noble Shadows and Mirrors: Otherness and Stardom in Skyfall *Spoiler alert In his seminal work Orientalism, Edward Saïd exposes the constructedness and mutual dependence of the categories of the West and the Orient. His claim is as follows: as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea…
Juana in a Million and the Malinche Myth
On the 27th of October I attended Juana in a Million at the Brian Friel Theatre in Queens, that was part of the Belfast Festival. It was an excellent one woman show and a very physical, dense and moving piece that dealt with love, loss, immigration and disenfranchisement. The show’s website has a very concise…
Private Archives/Public Good: Classic Mexican Film on Line Part 2
Arjan van Dijk the Acquisitions Editor, BRILL wrote to me in response to my 28th February post: Dear Dr Thornton, I just came across your blog from 28 February at www.niamhthornton.net. While I realise that scholars benefit from free access to primary sources, someone needs to pay the bill for organising and managing a project…
San Francisco part 1- Wanderings
I have just gotten over my jetlag enough to write about my experience in San Francisco. It was pretty intense on many levels. I went for seven days with 3 days taken up with the conference, one day with travel and the rest wandering around San Francisco. On arrival late at night off the BART…
Juárez: A dangerous place to be a woman
Sam Hawken The Dead Women of Juárez London: Serpent’s Tail, 2011. *This contains some spoilers* If you want a review without spoilers see, Mrs Peabody’s excellent blogpost: http://mrspeabodyinvestigates.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/17-sam-hawken-the-dead-women-of-juarez/ According to the attorney general’s office in Mexico the number of femicides in Juarez are the following: 18 in 1993; 19 in 1994; 36 in 1995; 37 in…
How to tame terror or, can you love war?
El Salvador is not one of my areas of specialisation. It is not a country that has received much attention outside of the field of post-conflict, trauma specialists, and those interested in the US sphere of interest, on the one hand, and literature, in particular those interested in the work of the poet and Revolutionary…
Grupo nuevo cine
Mexican cinema went through various periods of flux and renewal, one of these was in the 1960s. There were major events that occurred throughout that decade that changed cinema and filmmaking dramatically. One these was the formation of the Grupo nuevo cine [New Cinema Group]. This was a collective of filmmakers, critics, theorists and aficionados…
Blogging and Como agua para chocolate
Recently, whilst surfing the net on an entirely different matter, I came across this blog on Como agua para chocolate http://posthegemony.blogspot.com/2007/02/literal.html by Jon Beasley-Murray, based at the University of British Colombia. Whilst some may be daunted by the title, Posthegemony, don’t let it put you off. His is a clear and readable style and this…