James Scorer
James Scorer is Senior Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester, where he is also the Co-Director of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. His research interests include urban imaginaries, culture and politics in Latin America, particularly related to Buenos Aires, as well as Latin American film, photography and comics.
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Books by James Scorer
Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America is a cutting-edge study of the expanding worlds of Latin American comics. Despite lack of funding and institutional support, not since the mid-twentieth century have comics in the region been so dynamic, so diverse and so engaged with pressing social and cultural issues. Comics are being used as essential tools in debates about, for example, digital cultures, gender identities and political disenfranchisement.
Rather than analysing the current boom in comics by focusing just on the printed text, however, this book looks at diverse manifestations of comics ‘beyond the page’. Contributors explore digital comics and social media networks; comics as graffiti and stencil art in public spaces; comics as a tool for teaching architecture or processing social trauma; and the consumption and publishing of comics as forms of shaping national, social and political identities.
Bringing together authors from across Latin America and beyond, and covering examples from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay, the book sets out a panoramic vision of Latin American comics, whether in terms of scholarly contribution, geographical diversity or interdisciplinary methodologies.
Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America demonstrates the importance of studying how comics circulate in all manner of ways beyond print media. It also reminds us of the need to think about the creative role of comics in societies with less established comics markets than in Europe, the US and Asia.
https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=36665
The book also places Latin American and Caribbean racial formations within a broader global context. It shows that the region provides valuable opportunities for thinking about anti-racism, not least when recent political events worldwide have shown that, far from a 'post-racial' age, we are living in an era of intensified racist expression and racial injustice.
Papers by James Scorer
Palabras claves: literatura, pueblos, violencia, neoliberalismo, paisaje productivo y afectivo.
In recent years Argentine and Chilean cultural imaginaries have (re)turned with increasing regularity to the locus of the province and/or the interior. In this article we locate two contemporary novels set in the 1990s –La descomposición (2007) by the Argentine writer Hernán Ronsino and Niños extremistas (2013) by the Chilean Gonzalo Ortiz Peña– within this trend by analysing how they deploy the provincial town. The town has played an important role in the (cultural) history of Latin America, occupying both a topographically and symbolically liminal place between the country and the city. The violence inherent to these towns (whether constructive or destructive) challenges, among other things, the strict dichotomy of civilization versus barbarism that has often been used to separate rural from urban spaces. In this article we explore the constitutive violence of the town in both novels, in which changes in the landscape affect both bodies and ways of life in unexpected ways. While La descomposición incorporates that violence into the measured rhythms of human and non-human lives that are decaying, Niños extremistas turns that inherent violence into the boundless pace of festive destruction. Whether in dialogue with a pre-existing canon of a literature of the interior, or via an exploration of the implausible, both novels open up the possibility of a literary corpus around the figure of the town.
Key words: literature, towns, violence, neoliberalism, productive and affective landscapes
The articles included in this special issue address the shifting relationship between traces of the past and photography in Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present day. Looking at different forms of materiality and trace in Latin America, from pre-Columbian remains to body art and industrial ruins, this issue also understands photographs as material objects that ‘act’ within particular visual economies. In this introduction, we offer some brief reflections on ruins and ruination in Latin America, and on the relationship between photography and the past.
Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America is a cutting-edge study of the expanding worlds of Latin American comics. Despite lack of funding and institutional support, not since the mid-twentieth century have comics in the region been so dynamic, so diverse and so engaged with pressing social and cultural issues. Comics are being used as essential tools in debates about, for example, digital cultures, gender identities and political disenfranchisement.
Rather than analysing the current boom in comics by focusing just on the printed text, however, this book looks at diverse manifestations of comics ‘beyond the page’. Contributors explore digital comics and social media networks; comics as graffiti and stencil art in public spaces; comics as a tool for teaching architecture or processing social trauma; and the consumption and publishing of comics as forms of shaping national, social and political identities.
Bringing together authors from across Latin America and beyond, and covering examples from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay, the book sets out a panoramic vision of Latin American comics, whether in terms of scholarly contribution, geographical diversity or interdisciplinary methodologies.
Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America demonstrates the importance of studying how comics circulate in all manner of ways beyond print media. It also reminds us of the need to think about the creative role of comics in societies with less established comics markets than in Europe, the US and Asia.
https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=36665
The book also places Latin American and Caribbean racial formations within a broader global context. It shows that the region provides valuable opportunities for thinking about anti-racism, not least when recent political events worldwide have shown that, far from a 'post-racial' age, we are living in an era of intensified racist expression and racial injustice.
Palabras claves: literatura, pueblos, violencia, neoliberalismo, paisaje productivo y afectivo.
In recent years Argentine and Chilean cultural imaginaries have (re)turned with increasing regularity to the locus of the province and/or the interior. In this article we locate two contemporary novels set in the 1990s –La descomposición (2007) by the Argentine writer Hernán Ronsino and Niños extremistas (2013) by the Chilean Gonzalo Ortiz Peña– within this trend by analysing how they deploy the provincial town. The town has played an important role in the (cultural) history of Latin America, occupying both a topographically and symbolically liminal place between the country and the city. The violence inherent to these towns (whether constructive or destructive) challenges, among other things, the strict dichotomy of civilization versus barbarism that has often been used to separate rural from urban spaces. In this article we explore the constitutive violence of the town in both novels, in which changes in the landscape affect both bodies and ways of life in unexpected ways. While La descomposición incorporates that violence into the measured rhythms of human and non-human lives that are decaying, Niños extremistas turns that inherent violence into the boundless pace of festive destruction. Whether in dialogue with a pre-existing canon of a literature of the interior, or via an exploration of the implausible, both novels open up the possibility of a literary corpus around the figure of the town.
Key words: literature, towns, violence, neoliberalism, productive and affective landscapes
The articles included in this special issue address the shifting relationship between traces of the past and photography in Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present day. Looking at different forms of materiality and trace in Latin America, from pre-Columbian remains to body art and industrial ruins, this issue also understands photographs as material objects that ‘act’ within particular visual economies. In this introduction, we offer some brief reflections on ruins and ruination in Latin America, and on the relationship between photography and the past.