Books by Professor Thea Pitman
London: Tamesis, 2021
This monograph focuses on the current boom in Indigenous contemporary art in Brazil, exploring in... more This monograph focuses on the current boom in Indigenous contemporary art in Brazil, exploring in particular the way that this work interfaces with the art world through exhibitions, and the scope that there is for Indigenous curatorial agency in this relationship. After a brief introduction to Indigenous art, it gives an overview of the evolving relationship between Indigenous art and the art world, exploring in particular the nature of decolonial and/or Indigenous curatorial practice both in Brazil and elsewhere in the world. It then hones in on a recent exhibition: 'Arte Eletrônica Indígena' [Indigenous Electronic Art], held at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia in Salvador in August 2018. Based on participant observation and interviews, it provides an ethnographic reading of the opening weekend of the exhibition, looking at the alternative modalities of Indigenous curatorial agency that were exercised by the Indigenous people present. The conclusion explores the legacy of the 'Arte Eletrônica Indígena' exhibition, particularly for the Indigenous communities involved, and looks to the evidence provided by the exhibition for lessons to be learned for future exhibitions.
New York: Routledge, 2012
This volume provides an innovative and timely approach to a fast growing, yet still under-studied... more This volume provides an innovative and timely approach to a fast growing, yet still under-studied field in Latin American cultural production: digital online culture. It focuses on the transformations or continuations that cultural products and practices such as hypermedia fictions, net.art and online performance art, as well as blogs, films, databases and other genre-defying web-based projects, perform with respect to Latin American(ist) discourses, as well as their often contestatory positioning with respect to Western hegemonic discourses as they circulate online. The intellectual rationale for the volume is located at the crossroads of two, equally important, theoretical strands: theories of digital culture, in their majority the product of the anglophone academy; and contemporary debates on Latin American identity and culture.
Sample chapter: 'Cartographic Imaginaries: Mappling Latin(o) America's Place in a World of Networked Digital Technologies'.
New York: Peter Lang, 2009
This book is a detailed study of salient examples of Mexican travel writing from the nineteenth a... more This book is a detailed study of salient examples of Mexican travel writing from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While scholars have often explored the close relationship between European or North American travel writing and the discourse of imperialism, little has been written on how postcolonial subjects might relate to the genre. This study first traces the development of a travel-writing tradition based closely on European imperialist models in mid-nineteenth-century Mexico. It then goes on to analyse how the narrative techniques of postmodernism and the political agenda of postcolonialism might combine to help challenge the genre’s imperialist tendencies in late twentieth-century works of travel writing, focusing in particular on works by writers Juan Villoro, Héctor Perea and Fernando Solana Olivares.
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007
This collection of critical essays investigates an emergent and increasingly important field of c... more This collection of critical essays investigates an emergent and increasingly important field of cultural production in Latin America: cyberliterature and cyberculture in their varying manifestations, including blogs and hypertext narratives, collective novels and e-mags, digital art and short Net-films. Highly innovative in its conception, this book provides the first sustained academic focus on this area of cultural production, and investigates the ways in which cyberliterature and cyberculture in the broadest sense are providing new configurations of subjects, narrative voices, and even political agency, for Latin Americans. The volume is divided into two main sections. The first comprises eight chapters on the broad area of cyberculture and identity formation/preservation including the development of different types of cybercommunities in Latin America. While many of the chapters applaud the creative potential of these new virtual communities, identities and cultural products to create networks across boundaries and offer new contestatory strategies, they also consider whether such phenomena may risk reinforcing existing social inequalities or perpetuate conservatism. The second section comprises six chapters and an afterword that deal with the nature of cyberliterature in all its many forms, from the (cyber)cultural legacies of writers such as Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges, to traditional print literature from the region that reflects on the subject of new technology, to weblogs and hypertext and hypermedia fiction proper.
Edited by Lisa Shaw and Stephanie Dennison, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2005
A survey of contemporary Latin American popular culture, covering topics that range from music a... more A survey of contemporary Latin American popular culture, covering topics that range from music and film to popular festivals and fashion.
Like no other volume of its kind, Pop Culture Latin America! captures the breadth and vitality of pop culture in Central and South America and the Caribbean, exploring both familiar and lesser-known aspects of its unique melange of art, entertainment, spirituality, and celebrations.
Written by contributors who are scholars and specialists in the cultures and languages of Latin America, the book focuses on the historical, social, and political forces that have shaped Latino culture since 1945, particularly in the last two decades. Separate chapters cover music, popular cinema, mass media, theater and performance, literature, cultural heroes, religions and festivals, social movements and politics, the visual arts and architecture, sports and leisure, travel and tourism, and language.
Features
Chronology of major developments in the cultural life of post-1945 Latin America
A bibliography of the literature and electronic resources on the major forms of popular culture in each country or region
Articles by Professor Thea Pitman
Lugar Comum, 2021
Este artigo explora as tensões curatoriais na disseminação pública da
arte contemporânea indígen... more Este artigo explora as tensões curatoriais na disseminação pública da
arte contemporânea indígena (e co-criada) no Brasil, onde práticas
tradicionais de exibição de instituições de arte de elite podem ser
temporariamente decolonizadas por atores indígenas por meio de uma
forma improvisada e performática de curadoria. Isso é alcançado por
meio da sua apropriação física do espaço da galeria e seu uso dele tanto
para celebrar sua força cultural quanto para se engajar em uma
experiência de “comunalidade coeva” (Smith, 2012) com seu público.
Este artigo explora essas questões por meio de um estudo de caso do
projeto AEI - Arte Eletrônica Indígena, cujos resultados foram
exibidos no Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia em Salvador em 2018.
Ciencia y Cultura, 2020
This article focuses on creative work conducted at the intersection of textile art and new media ... more This article focuses on creative work conducted at the intersection of textile art and new media art in Latin America. In particular, given that Indigenous textile arts often form a source of inspiration for projects led by non-Indi-genous artists, it seeks to examine how such projects may be said to work in support of Indigenous resistance, contrasting a tactical resistant modality with a more “tactile” approach. It first offers an overview of Latin American art in this field, before focusing on the work of Mexican artist Amor Muñoz and Bolivian artist aruma (Sandra de Berduccy).
Cadernos de Linguística, 2020
Desde 1989, a comunidade indígena Kariri-Xocó do estado de Alagoas, Brasil, se envolve em um proc... more Desde 1989, a comunidade indígena Kariri-Xocó do estado de Alagoas, Brasil, se envolve em um processo singular de revitalização cultural. Trabalhamos para recuperar nossa língua ancestral, aproveitando as memórias da comunidade por meio de músicas, histórias e rituais, preenchendo assim lacunas em nosso vocabulário. Alguns de nós distribuímos listas de palavras para jovens e adultos da comunidade via WhatsApp, enquanto outros abriram uma escola para ensinar a língua a crianças mais novas. Este documento discutirá o processo de revitalização da língua da nossa comunidade. Em particular, veremos como nossa comunidade está aproveitando as mídias digitais para coletar, criar, disseminar e ensinar nossa língua como um meio importante de reforçar nossa identidade cultural.
Transmotion, 2019
This article seeks both to communicate a sense of the vibrancy and diversity of Indigenous new me... more This article seeks both to communicate a sense of the vibrancy and diversity of Indigenous new media artworks and projects, and to “frame” them within the context of the particular transnational networks of friendship and support into which they are born and in which they circulate. It is my contention that Indigenous new media arts have particularly flourished across the parts of the “Anglo-world” (Belich) that are the result of the early waves of British settler colonialism, most notably in countries such as Canada, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the United States. The article explores the conditions that make such global Indigenous networks across the British (post)colonial settler world possible, before moving on to study in more detail works by Hymhenteqhous Mizhekay Odayin/Turtle Heart, Skawennati, Ruben Anton Komangapik, Lisa Reihana, William Ray Wilson, and Lily Hibberd and Curtis Taylor, amongst others. It concludes with an analysis of the exhibition of Indigenous new...
Modern Languages Open, 2019
order to ensure transparency in the development of this document, it arose from a Translating Cul... more order to ensure transparency in the development of this document, it arose from a Translating Cultures and Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community (School of Advanced Study) workshop hosted at the Institute of Modern Languages Research in November 2017 and the ideas within are consequently indebted to all those who contributed to the day (see Wells for details of all of the speakers at the event, in addition to F. Carpenedo, B. Spadaro and G. Wall who took detailed notes). An initial document was subsequently drafted by N. Wells and C. Forsdick, and circulated to all speakers and attendees for further comment. The authors listed alphabetically here are those who contributed with valuable additional responses, suggestions and comments and who subsequently were actively consulted and involved in producing the final version.
Modern Languages Open, 2018
There has been much academic debate about the relationship of indigenous
communities to new medi... more There has been much academic debate about the relationship of indigenous
communities to new media technologies, specifically with respect to the way that
the former might appropriate the latter and the terms in which they might do so,
with a significant number of critics arguing that the concepts and lexicon of the
traditional practice of weaving, sometimes recast as ‘netweaving’, may offer the
most appropriate trope. However, such arguments typically remain at the level of
theory, providing little or no evidence of the way in which real indigenous communities
speak of how they appropriate new technologies. This article explores the poetics and underlying politics of indigenous appropriations of new media technologies, with reference to aesthetics where relevant, by contrasting the online presence of two highly prominent, prize-winning projects of indigenous internet appropriation: the web portal Índios Online, run by a group of different indigenous communities in north-eastern Brazil, and the homonymous website of the Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca of the Nasa community in south-western Colombia. While they have both been studied extensively in their national contexts, very little attention has been paid to the poetics and aesthetics of the different projects, and no previous study has taken a sustained comparative approach. I present evidence to demonstrate that while the latter do, to some extent, engage tropes of weaving in their appropriation of these technologies, the former tend to prefer hunter and/or warrior tropes. I argue that the greater or lesser involvement of indigenous women in the appropriation of new media technologies does not seem to be a major factor determining such a choice, despite the typically gynocentric practice of weaving and hence the feminisation of related discourse, and, in contrast, the more masculinist repertoire of hunter and warrior tropes. Instead, I find that the different geographical locations, traditional activities, artisanal production and, most importantly, the immediate political situation
and processes of the different communities do impact significantly on this choice.
PDF includes 2021 Corrigendum to provide the 3 epigraphs missing from the first section of the article.
Modern Languages Open, 2017
Digital Humanities Quarterly, 2017
This article addresses the relationship of the disciplines of Modern Languages and Digital Humani... more This article addresses the relationship of the disciplines of Modern Languages and Digital Humanities in Anglophone academia. It briefly compares and contrasts the nature of these “disciplines” – most frequently conceived of as either inter- or transdisciplines – before going on to examine in some detail the participation of Modern Linguists in Digital Humanities and that of Digital Humanists in Modern Languages. It argues that, while there is growing evidence of work that crosses “disciplinary” boundaries between DH and ML in both directions, more work of this sort needs to be done to optimise the potential of both disciplines. It also makes a particular case for Digital Humanities to remain open to critical cultural studies approaches to digital materials as pertaining to the discipline rather than focusing exclusively on more instrumental definitions of Digital Humanities. This argument is consistent with the concerns raised by other scholars with regard to the need for heterogeneity of approach and in particular for increased cultural criticism in Digital Humanities scholarship. Furthermore, we argue that this is where Modern Linguists can make their most decisive contribution to Digital Humanities research, offering what we term a “critical DHML” approach. We illustrate our arguments with a range of examples from the intersection of ML and DH in the broad field of Hispanic Studies, including the major findings of our own research into digital cultural production in a Latin American context conducted over the last ten years.
Revista Laboratorio, 2015
El hipertexto ha sido identificado por una serie de críticos como algo idóneamente apropiado para... more El hipertexto ha sido identificado por una serie de críticos como algo idóneamente apropiado para transmitir las complejidades de vivir con/entre dos o más culturas, patrias, temporalidades, creencias y/o sensibilidades estéticas. Sin embargo, muchos otros han temido el galopante crecimiento del internet, facilitado por su arquitectura hipertextual, precisamente por sus posibilidades para imponer la cultura y los valores de los Estados Unidos sobre grupos menos dominantes. Esquivando tales salvedades, dos destacadas artistas latinas que trabajaban en los años 90 con medios digitales identificaron las posibilidades expresivas del hipertexto como el mejor vehículo para sus exploraciones autobiográficas de una biculturalidad femenina. Este artículo explora las obras resultantes: Sangre Boliviana (1992-2002) de Lucia Grossberger Morales y Glass Houses (1997) de Jacalyn Lopez Garcia. Considera las intenciones de las artistas en cuanto a la representación de una biculturalidad específicamente femenina en sus obras y cómo, en su opinión, un medio hipertextual (y posiblemente también diseñado por/distribuido en la red) es lo más apropiado para ello. Examina también los varios tropos que utilizan para “visualizar” su expresión de biculturalidad femenina, particularmente con respecto a la pertinencia de estos mismos tropos en relación a los nuevos medios en los que las artistas estaban trabajando
Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 2010
Co-editor (con Claire Taylor) de Latin American Cyberculture and Cyberliterature (Liverpool: Live... more Co-editor (con Claire Taylor) de Latin American Cyberculture and Cyberliterature (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007). Actualmente prepara con Claire Taylor un volumen titulado Th e @rchive: The Discourses of Latin American Cyberculture (de próxima aparición, 2011).
iMex Revista: México Interdisciplinario / Interdisciplinary Mexico, 2012
While nuanced and sensitive non-essentialist theorisations of Chicano identity have been put forw... more While nuanced and sensitive non-essentialist theorisations of Chicano identity have been put forward by key critics working in the field, these same critics still struggle, on occasion, to disentangle themselves from having recourse to essentialist arguments in their own work. The case that I examine here constitutes a prime example of this problem within Chicano critical discourse. It concerns the debates, in Chicano intellectual circles, over definitions of 'Chicano cinema', focalised via an examination of a film that has provoked a quite particular polemic in this respect: non-Chicana director Allison Anders's Mi vida loca / My Crazy Life (1994). My discussion of Anders's film will centre on its reception with a range of professional film critics, mostly Chicana/os, as well as reports on the reaction of a sample group of the film's subjects – Chicana gang members – to their representation on screen. It will examine the factors at play in the way it has been received, and expose evidence of recursive essentialism in such arguments where apparent.
Dichtung Digital, Jan 6, 2007
Women: A Cultural Review, 2006
The seeming universality of pregnancy is continuously undermined by its concrete historical and l... more The seeming universality of pregnancy is continuously undermined by its concrete historical and local embeddedness (Rapp 1993:66). HIS study of birth narratives by contemporary Spanish-American women writers is primarily interested in the question of subjectivity and its representation: the subjectivity of the mother, the subjectivity of the child and the blurring and/or splitting of subjectivities before and during birth. It is not a psychoanalytic study so much as an exploration of textual strategies for representing such a crucial event in the construction of subjectivity, both of mother and child, in a contemporary Spanish-American context.
Lejana: Revista Crítica de Narrativa Breve, 2013
Este artículo explora cómo dos mexicanas narraron su relación con la España republicana en el mom... more Este artículo explora cómo dos mexicanas narraron su relación con la España republicana en el momento de la Guerra Civil española a través de un estudio detallado de Lo que vi en España: episodios de la Guerra (1940) de Blanca Lydia Trejo y Memorias de España, 1937España, (1992 de Elena Garro. Se centra en un análisis del discurso de la "fraternidad" que floreció entre México y la España republicana en aquel momento e indaga las razones por el malestar evidenciado por ambas escritoras con respecto a este discurso. Considera tanto el efecto de la naturaleza masculina del discurso como su fuerte asociación con el comunismo estalinista. También intenta identificar las alternativas que estas escritoras nos sugieren.
Literatura Mexicana, 2011
Elvira Vargas nació en un campo minero de Tlalpujahua, Michoacán, mudándose más tarde en su niñez... more Elvira Vargas nació en un campo minero de Tlalpujahua, Michoacán, mudándose más tarde en su niñez a Toluca y luego a la ciudad de México en 1920. Asistió a la escuela primaria y a la secundaria pero fue forzada por la pobreza a buscar trabajo a una edad temprana. Empezó desempeñándose en puestos de secretaria y otros trabajos similares mientras estudiaba una licenciatura en Derecho, pero luego de ejercer su profesión durante sólo un año, decidió probar el periodismo a comienzo de los años 30. Empezó escribiendo titulares para El Nacional y fue una pionera y ejemplo para otras mujeres periodista. Vargas fue la primera mujer periodista mexicana a quien se le asignó la sección "asuntos precidenciales" de un periódico mexicano.
Uploads
Books by Professor Thea Pitman
Sample chapter: 'Cartographic Imaginaries: Mappling Latin(o) America's Place in a World of Networked Digital Technologies'.
Like no other volume of its kind, Pop Culture Latin America! captures the breadth and vitality of pop culture in Central and South America and the Caribbean, exploring both familiar and lesser-known aspects of its unique melange of art, entertainment, spirituality, and celebrations.
Written by contributors who are scholars and specialists in the cultures and languages of Latin America, the book focuses on the historical, social, and political forces that have shaped Latino culture since 1945, particularly in the last two decades. Separate chapters cover music, popular cinema, mass media, theater and performance, literature, cultural heroes, religions and festivals, social movements and politics, the visual arts and architecture, sports and leisure, travel and tourism, and language.
Features
Chronology of major developments in the cultural life of post-1945 Latin America
A bibliography of the literature and electronic resources on the major forms of popular culture in each country or region
Articles by Professor Thea Pitman
arte contemporânea indígena (e co-criada) no Brasil, onde práticas
tradicionais de exibição de instituições de arte de elite podem ser
temporariamente decolonizadas por atores indígenas por meio de uma
forma improvisada e performática de curadoria. Isso é alcançado por
meio da sua apropriação física do espaço da galeria e seu uso dele tanto
para celebrar sua força cultural quanto para se engajar em uma
experiência de “comunalidade coeva” (Smith, 2012) com seu público.
Este artigo explora essas questões por meio de um estudo de caso do
projeto AEI - Arte Eletrônica Indígena, cujos resultados foram
exibidos no Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia em Salvador em 2018.
communities to new media technologies, specifically with respect to the way that
the former might appropriate the latter and the terms in which they might do so,
with a significant number of critics arguing that the concepts and lexicon of the
traditional practice of weaving, sometimes recast as ‘netweaving’, may offer the
most appropriate trope. However, such arguments typically remain at the level of
theory, providing little or no evidence of the way in which real indigenous communities
speak of how they appropriate new technologies. This article explores the poetics and underlying politics of indigenous appropriations of new media technologies, with reference to aesthetics where relevant, by contrasting the online presence of two highly prominent, prize-winning projects of indigenous internet appropriation: the web portal Índios Online, run by a group of different indigenous communities in north-eastern Brazil, and the homonymous website of the Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca of the Nasa community in south-western Colombia. While they have both been studied extensively in their national contexts, very little attention has been paid to the poetics and aesthetics of the different projects, and no previous study has taken a sustained comparative approach. I present evidence to demonstrate that while the latter do, to some extent, engage tropes of weaving in their appropriation of these technologies, the former tend to prefer hunter and/or warrior tropes. I argue that the greater or lesser involvement of indigenous women in the appropriation of new media technologies does not seem to be a major factor determining such a choice, despite the typically gynocentric practice of weaving and hence the feminisation of related discourse, and, in contrast, the more masculinist repertoire of hunter and warrior tropes. Instead, I find that the different geographical locations, traditional activities, artisanal production and, most importantly, the immediate political situation
and processes of the different communities do impact significantly on this choice.
PDF includes 2021 Corrigendum to provide the 3 epigraphs missing from the first section of the article.
The vast majority of hypertext and hypermedia fiction available today is produced by Anglophone writers living in the First World. Nevertheless, such works are presently being created by writers in the developing world and in languages other than English. This article seeks to explore the different perspectives that Latin American writers bring to the creation of hypertext and hypermedia fictions through the detailed study of two such works: Dolor y viceversa [Pain and Its Opposite] (2001-02) by Mexican/American author Blas Valdez and Tierra de extracción [Land of Extraction] (2002) by Peruvian/Venezuelan author Doménico Chiappe.
Sample chapter: 'Cartographic Imaginaries: Mappling Latin(o) America's Place in a World of Networked Digital Technologies'.
Like no other volume of its kind, Pop Culture Latin America! captures the breadth and vitality of pop culture in Central and South America and the Caribbean, exploring both familiar and lesser-known aspects of its unique melange of art, entertainment, spirituality, and celebrations.
Written by contributors who are scholars and specialists in the cultures and languages of Latin America, the book focuses on the historical, social, and political forces that have shaped Latino culture since 1945, particularly in the last two decades. Separate chapters cover music, popular cinema, mass media, theater and performance, literature, cultural heroes, religions and festivals, social movements and politics, the visual arts and architecture, sports and leisure, travel and tourism, and language.
Features
Chronology of major developments in the cultural life of post-1945 Latin America
A bibliography of the literature and electronic resources on the major forms of popular culture in each country or region
arte contemporânea indígena (e co-criada) no Brasil, onde práticas
tradicionais de exibição de instituições de arte de elite podem ser
temporariamente decolonizadas por atores indígenas por meio de uma
forma improvisada e performática de curadoria. Isso é alcançado por
meio da sua apropriação física do espaço da galeria e seu uso dele tanto
para celebrar sua força cultural quanto para se engajar em uma
experiência de “comunalidade coeva” (Smith, 2012) com seu público.
Este artigo explora essas questões por meio de um estudo de caso do
projeto AEI - Arte Eletrônica Indígena, cujos resultados foram
exibidos no Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia em Salvador em 2018.
communities to new media technologies, specifically with respect to the way that
the former might appropriate the latter and the terms in which they might do so,
with a significant number of critics arguing that the concepts and lexicon of the
traditional practice of weaving, sometimes recast as ‘netweaving’, may offer the
most appropriate trope. However, such arguments typically remain at the level of
theory, providing little or no evidence of the way in which real indigenous communities
speak of how they appropriate new technologies. This article explores the poetics and underlying politics of indigenous appropriations of new media technologies, with reference to aesthetics where relevant, by contrasting the online presence of two highly prominent, prize-winning projects of indigenous internet appropriation: the web portal Índios Online, run by a group of different indigenous communities in north-eastern Brazil, and the homonymous website of the Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca of the Nasa community in south-western Colombia. While they have both been studied extensively in their national contexts, very little attention has been paid to the poetics and aesthetics of the different projects, and no previous study has taken a sustained comparative approach. I present evidence to demonstrate that while the latter do, to some extent, engage tropes of weaving in their appropriation of these technologies, the former tend to prefer hunter and/or warrior tropes. I argue that the greater or lesser involvement of indigenous women in the appropriation of new media technologies does not seem to be a major factor determining such a choice, despite the typically gynocentric practice of weaving and hence the feminisation of related discourse, and, in contrast, the more masculinist repertoire of hunter and warrior tropes. Instead, I find that the different geographical locations, traditional activities, artisanal production and, most importantly, the immediate political situation
and processes of the different communities do impact significantly on this choice.
PDF includes 2021 Corrigendum to provide the 3 epigraphs missing from the first section of the article.
The vast majority of hypertext and hypermedia fiction available today is produced by Anglophone writers living in the First World. Nevertheless, such works are presently being created by writers in the developing world and in languages other than English. This article seeks to explore the different perspectives that Latin American writers bring to the creation of hypertext and hypermedia fictions through the detailed study of two such works: Dolor y viceversa [Pain and Its Opposite] (2001-02) by Mexican/American author Blas Valdez and Tierra de extracción [Land of Extraction] (2002) by Peruvian/Venezuelan author Doménico Chiappe.