Research Profile for
Dr Geoffrey Kantaris
Field:
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Latin American Culture
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Post:
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Reader in Latin American Culture
Dpt of Spanish and Portuguese
and Centre of Latin American Studies
University of Cambridge
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Current research project
Contemporary Latin American Cinema: The Urban Paradigm
Through a distinctive reading and comparison of three national cinematographies at their point of encounter with globalization, this study aims to add to our understanding of Latin American cultural responses to its problematic and uneven (post)modernity. Cinematic culture, in particular, is positioned on the cusp of national and global culture industries, caught between an incessant globalization of the imagined community of the nation, and a national recycling and interpretation of this new global imaginary, between national print cultures and international televisual culture. The study aims to contribute to our understanding not only of new cultural developments in Latin America, but also of their point of intersection with global systems of cultural and economic exchange. It will attempt to interrogate the metropolitan theorization of postmodern (urban) culture from an engaged yet critical standpoint: that of its global reach and its encounter with the violence engendered at the periphery of international finance.
Some preliminary work towards this project has been published (on-line versions are available): 
- "Violent Visions: Representations of Violence in Contemporary Latin American Urban Cinema". Seminar-paper version of an article published in Spanish in the Revista de la Universidad de Palermo [Buenos Aires], and in an extensively modified version in English as "The Young and the Damned: Street Visions in Latin American Cinema", in Stephen Hart, ed., Contemporary Latin American Cultural Studies (London: Arnold, 2003) 177-89.
- "Peripheries of Globalization: Fredric Jameson's The Seeds of Time and Víctor Gaviria's The Rose Seller (La vendedora de rosas)". Preliminary version in English of a paper published in Spanish as "Periferias de la globalización: la disfasia temporal en La vendedora de rosas de Víctor Gaviria". Revista objeto visual [Caracas] 9 (julio 2003): 70-81.
- "The Last Snapshots of Modernity: Argentine Cinema after the 'Process' ". Bulletin of Hispanic Studies [Glasgow] (April 1996). This paper examines the 'framing' of modernity in two Argentine films, Fernando Solanas' Sur (South, 1988) and Eliseo Subiela's Últimas imágenes del naufragio (Last Images of the Shipwreck, 1989).
- "Allegorical Cities: Bodies and Visions in Colombian Urban Cinema". Estudios interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe [Tel Aviv] 9.2 (julio-diciembre, 1998) (if this link is slow, try this alternative server without illustrations). This paper compares two Colombian films, Rodrigo D. No futuro by Víctor Gaviria and La estrategia del caracol by Sergio Cabrera, in an attempt to show how, in their different ways, they try to map the lines of intersection between body, screen, and social space. Both films explore the dissolution and recombination of (local) place under the speculative flows of economic and cultural capital, and the decorporealization of space within the aggressive (global) realm of visualization and the simulacrum. The paper uses analytical categories developed by Henri Lefebvre and by cultural geographers such as David Harvey and Derek Gregory.
- "Between Dolls, Vampires, and Cyborgs: Recursive Bodies in Mexican Urban Cinema ". Paper given to the Modern Languages Society, University of Cambridge, November 1998, to the Society of Latin American Studies conference, Cambridge April 1999. Also given at "Hispanic Studies and Postmodernist Theories" conference, Institute of Romance Studies, University of London, Friday 4th June 1999. This paper examines two films, Íntimo terror by Walter Doehner Pecanins and Cronos by Guillermo del Toro. Both films attempt to capture, in very different ways, the spatio-temporal rifts experienced in the megapolis. I argue that both films appear to be tracing out the spatio-temporal boundaries where the twin logic of representation and production phases into and out of a recursive order of simulation and replication.
- List of other publications
Contact information
I welcome contact from anyone working in related areas, whether it be comment, enquiries, discussion of issues, or offers for sharing of information.
- E-mail: Geoffrey.Kantaris@caths.cam.ac.uk
- Facsimile: +44 1223 338340 (marked for the attention of Dr Kantaris)
- Address (research/postgraduate issues): Director, Centre of Latin American Studies, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge CB2 1RX, England - UK
- Address (undergraduate issues): Dr Geoffrey Kantaris, St Catharine's College, Cambridge CB2 1RL, England - UK
- Telephone: +44 1223 338312 (direct line)
Geoffrey Kantaris