The strategic ownership of femenine commitment: transgendered identifications in some feminine militant falangist’s work

Este estudio muestra el control de la imagen de la mujer en las organizaciones falangistas durante la República Española a través de los relatos. Concretamente, se resalta la retórica falangista de la entrega. Frente a la insistencia falangista en la virilidad y la verticalidad fálica pudo coexistir una retórica del servicio y de la entrega – retórica ésta que se aplicaba igualmente al hombre y a la mujer.This paper shows woman's image control through stories in Falangistas organizations, during Spanish Republic. Falangista rhetoric of devotion is stood out. In front of the Falangista insistence in manliness and in phallus uprightness, it could coexist the rhetoric of service and devotion, applied equally to man and woman

Cinema and the Mediation of Everyday Life in 1940s and 1950s Spain

This essay discusses the AHRB-funded collaborative project ‘An Oral History of Cinema-going in 1940s and 1950s Spain’ undertaken by the author with co-researchers in Spain and the US. It argues a case for studying popular cinema – neglected by film historians in Spain – and popular audiences in particular, stressing the need to be attentive to the agency of spectators and to the ways in which cinema-going intersects with everyday life. The essay is particularly interested in the positive meanings of escapism for Spanish spectators of Hollywood cinema in the first two decades after the Spanish Civil War, at a time of severe political repression and economic hardship under the Franco Dictatorship; and in how, at the same time, watching Hollywood movies introduced consumerist values in anticipation of the regime’s later overt adoption of capitalist modernization. The role of women spectators becomes particularly important here, given that, as home-makers, they felt the effects of economic hardship particularly keenly, while at the same time they were the principal targets of the consumerist values disseminated by Hollywood

Cinema and the Mediation of Everyday Life in 1940s and 1950s Spain

This essay discusses the AHRB-funded collaborative project ‘An Oral History of Cinema-going in 1940s and 1950s Spain’ undertaken by the author with co-researchers in Spain and the US. It argues a case for studying popular cinema – neglected by film historians in Spain – and popular audiences in particular, stressing the need to be attentive to the agency of spectators and to the ways in which cinema-going intersects with everyday life. The essay is particularly interested in the positive meanings of escapism for Spanish spectators of Hollywood cinema in the first two decades after the Spanish Civil War, at a time of severe political repression and economic hardship under the Franco Dictatorship; and in how, at the same time, watching Hollywood movies introduced consumerist values in anticipation of the regime’s later overt adoption of capitalist modernization. The role of women spectators becomes particularly important here, given that, as home-makers, they felt the effects of economic hardship particularly keenly, while at the same time they were the principal targets of the consumerist values disseminated by Hollywood

Pleasure and historical memory in Spanish Gothic film

This essay argues that scholars of Spanish culture are too ready to assume a reading of Gothic texts in terms of historical memory, or the rectification of injustices that occurred during the Franco era. It suggests that there has been a neglect of the question of the pleasures of reading or viewing the Gothic, even though these pleasures may well undermine the desire to do retrospective justice to the victims of Franco. Using as a case study the film Insensibles (Juan Carlos Medina 2012) this essay proposes some examples of pleasures that serve to disrupt the recuperation of historical memory, and calls for better awareness of the pleasures of genre in analysing relevant texts

Revisiting ‘place’ in a realist novel: ‘Thinking space’ in Galdós’s Torquemada en la hoguera (1889)

Departing from the premise that Galdós’s close engagement with space and place deserves to be at the forefront of scholarly attention, this article provides an in-depth study of their significance in Torquemada en la hoguera. It begins by analysing the relationship between the novel’s locations and the real world, demonstrating that the author codes the city of Madrid to express social concerns and promote reader engagement. It then proceeds to examine the public and private spheres, before highlighting the “place of the imagination” in the novel. It reveals that, as in Galdós’s press articles, reality is used as a springboard in Torquemada en la hoguera and, drawing upon recent theories, it posits that places serve as a framework for engaging readers with contemporary concerns and as an imaginative springboard for Galdós. They trigger what is effectively a “thinking space” for the author and it is through unravelling their significance that we can fully appreciate Galdós’s psychological sensitivity, the novel’s modernity, its symbolic value, and imaginative depth. The article concludes by proposing that Galdós’s works deserve to be re-examined as “Novels of the Geographical Imagination” and urges readers to revisit the significance of space and place therein

Time, materiality, and the work of memory

An introductory, agenda setting chapter for the volume, "Remembering and Forgetting on Europe's Southern Periphery"

Afectividad y autoría femenina. La construcción estratégica de la subjetividad en las escritoras del siglo XIX

AbstractThe article aims to trace the complex emotional evolution of female subjectivity over the course of the nineteenth century, through analysis of the successive generations of women writers who emerged from the 1840s on. It will stress the non-linearity of this process whose oscillations respond in complex ways to the changing tensions between the various political cultures of the day. It will also insist on the inevitable incoherence of subjectivities whose construction responds to the strategic attempt to reconcile what is possible with what is acceptable.El ensayo pretende trazar la compleja evolución emocional de la subjetividad femenina a lo largo del siglo XIX, a través del análisis de las sucesivas generaciones de escritoras que surgieron a partir de la década de los 40. Insistiremos en la no linealidad de este proceso, cuyos vaivenes se relacionan de una manera compleja con las tensiones cambiantes entre las diversas culturas políticas del momento. También insistiremos en la inevitable incoherencia de unas subjetividades cuya construcción responde al intento estratégico de reconciliar lo posible con lo aceptable.  AbstractThe article aims to trace the complex emotional evolution of female subjectivity over the course of the nineteenth century, through analysis of the successive generations of women writers who emerged from the 1840s on. It will stress the non-linearity of this process whose oscillations respond in complex ways to the changing tensions between the various political cultures of the day. It will also insist on the inevitable incoherence of subjectivities whose construction responds to the strategic attempt to reconcile what is possible with what is acceptable