The Spanish American Crónica Modernista, Temporality, and Material Culture: The Unstoppable Presses of Modernismo. Lynchburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2012.

The Spanish American Crónica Modernista, Temporality, and Material Culture: The Unstoppable Presses of Modernismo explores how Spanish American modernista writers incorporated journalistic formalities and industry models into their texts, primarily through the crónica genre, allowing them to advance their literary interests. Through textual analysis of a variety of modernista writers including José Martí, Amado Nervo, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and Rubén Darío, this book argues that at the core of the modernista movement’s literary ambitions and aesthetic ideology are seemingly extra-textual elements such as temporality, the material formats of the newspaper and book, and editorial influence. Thus, instead of being stripped of an esteemed place in the literary sphere due to the modernistas’ participation in the market-based newspaper industry, journalism actually brought modernismo closer to the artistic autonomy desired by writers of the period.

From a theoretical perspective, the foundations of the argument in The Spanish American Crónica Modernista focus in on a philosophical and sociological perspective of the literary as found in such thinkers as Pierre Bourdieu, Ángel Rama and Giles Deleuze. These ideas help to form an original perspective in modernista studies that assist in connecting journalistic production of the movement to historical, economic and temporal contexts and how the shifting transformations of modernity impacted relationships between artistic spheres, authoritative institutions and market-based influences. To support the philosophical idea of the literary and the social factors that influence its creation, reproduction, technical transmission and consumption, I also incorporate ideas and methodology from scholars that focus on the importance of the material format of literary texts. Applying these ideas to the interaction between the modernista movement and the journalism industry allows for a better understanding of how the material textuality of the crónica impacts its interpretation and readership. Modernistas, aware of the influence of the newspaper and its readership, gained distinction in the journalistic field which lead to prolonged relationships with editors who succeeded in making the crónica a critical part of the news page.

Behind the Masks of Modernism: Global and Transnational Perspectives. Eds. Andrew Reynolds and Bonnie Roos. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2016.

Global Modernisms and Modernities is an anthology that studies themes of global modernisms through the lenses of masks and maskings. As a group of international modernist scholars, we explore regional, national and transnational modernisms as they are represented through literature, art, history, architecture, drama, and cultural studies. We are invested in recent studies of global modernisms and the “transnational turn” which de-centers modernism from its Western origins. In dialogue with other recent works on global modernisms such as, Mark Wollaeger’s lengthy anthology, The Oxford Handbook to Global Modernisms (Oxford 2012), Laura Doyle and Laura Winkiel’s Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity (U Indiana 2005) and Jahan Ramazani’s A Transnational Poetics (U Chicago 2009), our text uses the trope of masks and maskings to offer a comparative scaffolding that explores how artists and writers produced their works in moments of emerging modernity and deep societal transformations.

Reviewed in:                                                                                                           

Modernism/Modernity 24.1 (Jan. 2017): 195-198 (María del Pilar Blanco)

Journal of Languages, Texts, and Society 1 (Apr. 2017): 60-60 (Yaqing Xie)

Journal of Modern Literature 41.2 (Winter 2018): 171-74 (Bi Yiqing)

Comparative Literature Studies 55.2 (2018): 395-400 (Mark DiGiacomo)

Reflecting the Fin de siglo: Print and Visual Media in Spanish America at the Turn of the 20th Century. Book Manuscript in Progress.

This study will explore the intersection of literary and visual cultures, and technology in Latin America at the turn of the 20th century. In this book I argue that the connection between high aesthetics, mass production, swelling readerships and technological industry demonstrated a transfer of power in the world of culture from the “Lettered City” to the “Visual City” with consumers increasingly attracted to photographic and illustrative visualizations and the science behind the industries of mass reproduction. Letrados ceased to hold a near-monopoly over discursive production as print literature proper evolved and expanded into a more complex and diverse culture industry. The monograph will discuss how through the authority of the growing visual market, a collectivity of viewers, a community of simultaneous looking, was integrated into the Spanish American artistic field, decisively affecting the status of artists and writers: their expectations of financial profit as much as their opportunities to achieve professional autonomy.