ICED, which stands for “I Can End Deportation,” is a videogame released in 2008 by the human righ... more ICED, which stands for “I Can End Deportation,” is a videogame released in 2008 by the human rights organization Breakthrough. The game places the player in the social and legal environments faced by undocumented immigrants in contemporary New York. This article presents ICED as a type
of popular solution to the challenge of using videogames for meaningful social criticism and analyzes its mode of production as the key source for this popular potential. The creators use design techniques and gaming tactics common in virtual worlds to create a humanitarian game that problematizes the idea of free will. Instead of making free will a tool for progressing in the game, ICED uses roaming to create a frustrating game experience. This frustration is an affective lesson about undocumented immigration and the social and legal environment that casts individuals in a world void of freedom
and some basic human rights.
This essay investigates the critical reception of the documentary Jazz: The Story of America's Mu... more This essay investigates the critical reception of the documentary Jazz: The Story of America's Music, directed by Ken Burns and shown on PBS in 2001. Although studies on reception are now common regarding television, the reception of documentary is an underexplored area. Typically, documentary theory has placed an emphasis on truth and epistemology; only recently have there been inquiries on audiences. Expanding on the latter contributions, the author looks at critics' reception of the documentary and the way identity and truth related to racialized interpretations of the text. The author's analysis suggests that these viewers responded strongly to the documentary's racial arguments. However, the responses were not determined by the viewer's race. To reconcile this finding with an idea of race as determinant of reception, the author proposes that it is not the viewer's racial identity but the function of race in the viewer's life that determines modes of reception.
Using the sale of Univision in 2007 to a consortium of private equity firms as our case study, th... more Using the sale of Univision in 2007 to a consortium of private equity firms as our case study, this article demonstrates how the regulation of Spanish-language broadcasting has codified exclusionary definitions of media diversity and naturalized English-language citizens as the primary members of the televisual public sphere in the United States. We situate the regulation of Spanish-language broadcasting within the troubled history of media diversity initiatives and alongside the ascent of neoliberal policy-making to highlight how regulators have been unwilling to recognize the importance of linguistic diversity to multicultural and multiracial society. Drawing on participatory democratic theory, we argue that the regulation of Spanish-language broadcasting has infringed on the political rights of Latino citizens.
In this examination of the highly successful Spanish-language program Eva Luna, Hector Amaya argu... more In this examination of the highly successful Spanish-language program Eva Luna, Hector Amaya argues for the politically progressive potential of the telenovela as a serial melodrama. Ultimately, however, he critiques Eva Luna's failure to meaningfully engage with contemporary topics of relevance to Latino audiences. e telenovela Eva Luna ( -) marks a new direction for Univision's primetime programming and a relative departure from its narrative traditions. Since its inception in , Univision, originally named Spanish International Network (SIN), has relied on telenovelas from Latin America to ll its primetime schedule. e majority of these telenovelas, o en from Mexico's Televisa, are conventionally conservative, rags-to-riches stories that scholars in Latin America have criticized for reconstituting traditional gender, racial, and class prejudices. Because Univision relies on these problematic shows, Latino media activist organizations argue that Univision cannot possibly meet the cultural and ethnic demands of Latinas/ os living in the United States, who require programming that re ects their reality and that can help them navigate U.S. society and culture. But due to factors that include the growing political, cultural, and economic clout of Latinas/os in the United States, and changes in the Spanish-language media landscape, Univision is now interested in expanding their U.S. production capabilities. Eva Luna is partly the result of Univision's e ort to produce more of its own primetime programming while continuing its ratings successes.
Early in the first season of Ugly Betty (ABC) we learn that Betty's father, Ignacio Suarez (playe... more Early in the first season of Ugly Betty (ABC) we learn that Betty's father, Ignacio Suarez (played by Cuban-American actor Tony Plana) is having some problems with his Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). He is ill; his medicine has run out, but he does not want to ask the HMO for a new prescription. In the episode 'Fey's Sleigh Ride', Betty (America Ferrera) must go in person to the pharmacy where she discovers that her father has been using a fake social security number. Up to this point in the narrative, Ignacio has been depicted as an unusual man and father. He is the primary care-giver to his two daughters: he cooks for them, stays at home, and shows kindness and emotional wisdom not typically associated with an older working-class Latino male. He has been made sympathetic through softening (or perhaps feminizing) his masculinity. But the plot throws a monkey-wrench in the narrative when we discover that he is an undocumented immigrant, one who has committed what the legal and immigration system tried to define as a felony. Perhaps because of this sympathetic representation of an undocumented immigrant, perhaps because the show casts Latinas/os in key production, writing and acting positions, Ugly Betty is seen in the media world as a great example of good media corporate ethics. However, Ugly Betty is the only one-hour show centered on and at least partly produced by Latinas/os on prime-time English-speaking US television. Ironically, by its very existence, the show has helped ABC maintain a respectable reputation regarding diversity programming. In its exceptionality, and in the discursive positioning of the show as good corporate ethics, Ugly Betty illustrates current understandings of diversity and labor in today's deregulated media environment.
This essay investigates the critical reception of the documentary Jazz: The Story of America's Mu... more This essay investigates the critical reception of the documentary Jazz: The Story of America's Music, directed by Ken Burns and shown on PBS in 2001. Although studies on reception are now common regarding television, the reception of documentary is an underexplored area. Typically, documentary theory has placed an emphasis on truth and epistemology; only recently have there been inquiries on audiences. Expanding on the latter contributions, the author looks at critics' reception of the documentary and the way identity and truth related to racialized interpretations of the text. The author's analysis suggests that these viewers responded strongly to the documentary's racial arguments. However, the responses were not determined by the viewer's race. To reconcile this finding with an idea of race as determinant of reception, the author proposes that it is not the viewer's racial identity but the function of race in the viewer's life that determines modes of reception.
Three of the first coalition soldiers to die in Iraq in 2003 were non-citizen Latinos who were gi... more Three of the first coalition soldiers to die in Iraq in 2003 were non-citizen Latinos who were given posthumous citizenship. This essay places the discursive contexts of the events against the backdrop of liberalism. The central argument is that giving posthumous citizenship to the soldiers was an illiberal practice because (1) it meant naturalizing the Latinos without their consent and (2) the debates obscured the illiberal ways in which the armed forces in America are staffed. These two illiberal elements were supported by ethnocentric discourses on citizenship and nationalism that assumed the soldiers desired naturalization and that reproduced the idea that the volunteer army equally targets all Americans as potential conscripts. Because of this, the honor of posthumous citizenship is reinterpreted as belonging to the American history of imperialism, class, and racial stratification.
Y tu Mamá también/And Your Mother Too (Cuarón, 2001) and Machuca (Wood, 2004), two successful fil... more Y tu Mamá también/And Your Mother Too (Cuarón, 2001) and Machuca (Wood, 2004), two successful films that broke box office records in their respective countries, Mexico and Chile, are both coming-of-age stories that narrate unlikely male friendships that cross traditional Latin American social boundaries. Additionally, the female characters in both films function as catalysts of the unlikely male friendships and serve as bridges to the utopian spaces represented by the idyllic beach at the end of the long political tenure of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in Y tu Mamá, and the integrated catholic school during the brief but socially promising government of Salvador Allende in Machuca. At first glance, it appears as though the realism of each film rests on the injurious use of women as signs demarcating the boundaries of a patriarchal social space inhabited by men, and narrated by men to men. We argue, however, that the narratives also provide critiques of traditional sexualities and thus can be understood as relatively progressive texts that confirm the emergence of new masculinities in Mexico and Chile. 47 SHC 4 (1) 47-62
This article explores the textualisation of masculinity and race in the Mexican film Amores perro... more This article explores the textualisation of masculinity and race in the Mexican film Amores perros. The central argument is that the film displays Mexican masculinities in both a transgressive and conventional fashion. Transgression is articulated with narratives about life in Mexico City that challenge traditional Mexican masculinities, particularly as these relate to brown masculinities. These traditional masculinities are proven obsolete and futureless. Masculinities that are more progressive are textualised through reference to symbolic elements of manliness codified through whiteness and wealth. These are deemed promising, capable of development and oriented toward the future. However, in representing brownness as obsolete and whiteness as progressive, the film reproduces conventional ideas about masculinities, which are often given value through class and race. The film lays bare race, class and gender tensions in the modern Mexican state, exposing the ways in which ideas of progress and modernity can too easily reconstitute racial and class disenfranchisement.
After undergoing a mastectomy in 1991, Matuschka began photographing her nude body, and in these ... more After undergoing a mastectomy in 1991, Matuschka began photographing her nude body, and in these images she often highlighted the scar on her torso. Other women have acted in a similar fashion and have produced representations of their bodies after mastectomies. In this article the role the activity of photography plays in the process of self-formation of Matuschka is investigated. Borrowing from Michel Foucault's technologies of the self, photography is inscribed in the tradition of art as inquiry and art production as manipulation of the self, and it is argued that the stylistic ways in which Matuschka has represented her body add an ethical dimension to her work. This ethical component shows a desire to fashion a new self by acting on the way her body is seen.
Breast cancer impacts society at different levels and in different ways. It is an illness and as ... more Breast cancer impacts society at different levels and in different ways. It is an illness and as such it is of interest to scientists, policy makers and women at risk or already ill. In addition, the impact of breast cancer on large numbers of women in many Western societies and on patient activism has made the disease a matter of education, public discourse and debate. In breast cancer many discourses and types of social practices converge, but there is a limited subset that gives character to breast cancer as a social phenomenon: this includes media practices and representations, health campaigns, women's activism and policy debates regarding medical research and treatment. The present collection of essays addresses breast cancer as a social and educational phenomenon impacted by specialized debates on knowledge, science and education and the more general discourses of gender, illness and health that define it socially, politically and personally. The editors believe that the relationship between specialized debates and general discourses on breast cancer constitutes a dual pedagogy aimed at educating medical and science practitioners regarding the social and personal impact of the illness and at educating women on how to avoid the illness and, if that fails, on how to be a proper breast cancer sufferer. Such a dual pedagogy, and the sometimes contradictory discursive spaces it generates, gives meaning to the activities associated with treatment and research as well as the experiences of women at risk or ill.
“Drawing on the Athenian tradition of ‘wielding citizenship as a weapon to defend a contingently ... more “Drawing on the Athenian tradition of ‘wielding citizenship as a weapon to defend a contingently defined polis,’ Hector Amaya has crafted an elegant and sophisticated analysis of the contemporary policies designed to contain and criminalize Latina/os. Citizenship Excess demonstrates that he is one of the leading Latina/o Media Scholars today.”
—Angharad N. Valdivia, General Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies and author of Latina/os
Drawing on contemporary conflicts between Latino/as and anti-immigrant forces, Citizenship Excess illustrates the limitations of liberalism as expressed through U.S. media channels. Inspired by Latin American critical scholarship on the “coloniality of power,” Amaya demonstrates that nativists use the privileges associated with citizenship to accumulate power. That power is deployed to aggressively shape politics, culture, and the law, effectively undermining Latino/as who are marked by the ethno-racial and linguistic difference that nativists love to hate. Yet these social characteristics present crucial challenges to the political, legal, and cultural practices that define citizenship.
Amaya examines the role of ethnicity and language in shaping the mediated public sphere through cases ranging from the participation of Latino/as in the Iraqi war and pro-immigration reform marches to labor laws restricting Latino/a participation in English-language media and news coverage of undocumented immigrant detention centers. Citizenship Excess demonstrates that the evolution of the idea of citizenship in the United States and the political and cultural practices that define it are intricately intertwined with nativism.
Hector Amaya advances into new territory in Latin American and U.S. cinema studies in this innova... more Hector Amaya advances into new territory in Latin American and U.S. cinema studies in this innovative analysis of the differing critical receptions of Cuban film in Cuba and the United States during the Cold War. Synthesizing film reviews, magazine articles, and other primary documents, Screening Cuba compares Cuban and U.S. reactions to four Cuban films: Memories of Underdevelopment, Lucia, One Way or Another, and Portrait of Teresa.
In examining cultural production through the lens of the Cold War, Amaya reveals how contrasting interpretations by Cuban and U.S. critics are the result of the political cultures in which they operated. While Cuban critics viewed the films as powerful symbols of the social promises of the Cuban revolution, liberal and leftist American critics found meaning in the films as representations of anti-establishment progressive values and Cold War discourses. By contrasting the hermeneutics of Cuban and U.S. culture, criticism, and citizenship, Amaya argues that critical receptions of political films constitute a kind of civic public behavior.
"Truly groundbreaking. Amaya's provocative and illuminating analysis uses a Cuba-U.S. framework to address film criticism as a way of exercising political citizenship, providing a glimpse into the cultural and political effects of the Cold War."--Ana López, coeditor of The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts
“Screening Cuba joins a new generation of writings about Cuban culture and cultural politics. An original contribution to cinema reception studies."--Michael Chanan, author of Cuban Cinema
ICED, which stands for “I Can End Deportation,” is a videogame released in 2008 by the human righ... more ICED, which stands for “I Can End Deportation,” is a videogame released in 2008 by the human rights organization Breakthrough. The game places the player in the social and legal environments faced by undocumented immigrants in contemporary New York. This article presents ICED as a type
of popular solution to the challenge of using videogames for meaningful social criticism and analyzes its mode of production as the key source for this popular potential. The creators use design techniques and gaming tactics common in virtual worlds to create a humanitarian game that problematizes the idea of free will. Instead of making free will a tool for progressing in the game, ICED uses roaming to create a frustrating game experience. This frustration is an affective lesson about undocumented immigration and the social and legal environment that casts individuals in a world void of freedom
and some basic human rights.
This essay investigates the critical reception of the documentary Jazz: The Story of America's Mu... more This essay investigates the critical reception of the documentary Jazz: The Story of America's Music, directed by Ken Burns and shown on PBS in 2001. Although studies on reception are now common regarding television, the reception of documentary is an underexplored area. Typically, documentary theory has placed an emphasis on truth and epistemology; only recently have there been inquiries on audiences. Expanding on the latter contributions, the author looks at critics' reception of the documentary and the way identity and truth related to racialized interpretations of the text. The author's analysis suggests that these viewers responded strongly to the documentary's racial arguments. However, the responses were not determined by the viewer's race. To reconcile this finding with an idea of race as determinant of reception, the author proposes that it is not the viewer's racial identity but the function of race in the viewer's life that determines modes of reception.
Using the sale of Univision in 2007 to a consortium of private equity firms as our case study, th... more Using the sale of Univision in 2007 to a consortium of private equity firms as our case study, this article demonstrates how the regulation of Spanish-language broadcasting has codified exclusionary definitions of media diversity and naturalized English-language citizens as the primary members of the televisual public sphere in the United States. We situate the regulation of Spanish-language broadcasting within the troubled history of media diversity initiatives and alongside the ascent of neoliberal policy-making to highlight how regulators have been unwilling to recognize the importance of linguistic diversity to multicultural and multiracial society. Drawing on participatory democratic theory, we argue that the regulation of Spanish-language broadcasting has infringed on the political rights of Latino citizens.
In this examination of the highly successful Spanish-language program Eva Luna, Hector Amaya argu... more In this examination of the highly successful Spanish-language program Eva Luna, Hector Amaya argues for the politically progressive potential of the telenovela as a serial melodrama. Ultimately, however, he critiques Eva Luna's failure to meaningfully engage with contemporary topics of relevance to Latino audiences. e telenovela Eva Luna ( -) marks a new direction for Univision's primetime programming and a relative departure from its narrative traditions. Since its inception in , Univision, originally named Spanish International Network (SIN), has relied on telenovelas from Latin America to ll its primetime schedule. e majority of these telenovelas, o en from Mexico's Televisa, are conventionally conservative, rags-to-riches stories that scholars in Latin America have criticized for reconstituting traditional gender, racial, and class prejudices. Because Univision relies on these problematic shows, Latino media activist organizations argue that Univision cannot possibly meet the cultural and ethnic demands of Latinas/ os living in the United States, who require programming that re ects their reality and that can help them navigate U.S. society and culture. But due to factors that include the growing political, cultural, and economic clout of Latinas/os in the United States, and changes in the Spanish-language media landscape, Univision is now interested in expanding their U.S. production capabilities. Eva Luna is partly the result of Univision's e ort to produce more of its own primetime programming while continuing its ratings successes.
Early in the first season of Ugly Betty (ABC) we learn that Betty's father, Ignacio Suarez (playe... more Early in the first season of Ugly Betty (ABC) we learn that Betty's father, Ignacio Suarez (played by Cuban-American actor Tony Plana) is having some problems with his Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). He is ill; his medicine has run out, but he does not want to ask the HMO for a new prescription. In the episode 'Fey's Sleigh Ride', Betty (America Ferrera) must go in person to the pharmacy where she discovers that her father has been using a fake social security number. Up to this point in the narrative, Ignacio has been depicted as an unusual man and father. He is the primary care-giver to his two daughters: he cooks for them, stays at home, and shows kindness and emotional wisdom not typically associated with an older working-class Latino male. He has been made sympathetic through softening (or perhaps feminizing) his masculinity. But the plot throws a monkey-wrench in the narrative when we discover that he is an undocumented immigrant, one who has committed what the legal and immigration system tried to define as a felony. Perhaps because of this sympathetic representation of an undocumented immigrant, perhaps because the show casts Latinas/os in key production, writing and acting positions, Ugly Betty is seen in the media world as a great example of good media corporate ethics. However, Ugly Betty is the only one-hour show centered on and at least partly produced by Latinas/os on prime-time English-speaking US television. Ironically, by its very existence, the show has helped ABC maintain a respectable reputation regarding diversity programming. In its exceptionality, and in the discursive positioning of the show as good corporate ethics, Ugly Betty illustrates current understandings of diversity and labor in today's deregulated media environment.
This essay investigates the critical reception of the documentary Jazz: The Story of America's Mu... more This essay investigates the critical reception of the documentary Jazz: The Story of America's Music, directed by Ken Burns and shown on PBS in 2001. Although studies on reception are now common regarding television, the reception of documentary is an underexplored area. Typically, documentary theory has placed an emphasis on truth and epistemology; only recently have there been inquiries on audiences. Expanding on the latter contributions, the author looks at critics' reception of the documentary and the way identity and truth related to racialized interpretations of the text. The author's analysis suggests that these viewers responded strongly to the documentary's racial arguments. However, the responses were not determined by the viewer's race. To reconcile this finding with an idea of race as determinant of reception, the author proposes that it is not the viewer's racial identity but the function of race in the viewer's life that determines modes of reception.
Three of the first coalition soldiers to die in Iraq in 2003 were non-citizen Latinos who were gi... more Three of the first coalition soldiers to die in Iraq in 2003 were non-citizen Latinos who were given posthumous citizenship. This essay places the discursive contexts of the events against the backdrop of liberalism. The central argument is that giving posthumous citizenship to the soldiers was an illiberal practice because (1) it meant naturalizing the Latinos without their consent and (2) the debates obscured the illiberal ways in which the armed forces in America are staffed. These two illiberal elements were supported by ethnocentric discourses on citizenship and nationalism that assumed the soldiers desired naturalization and that reproduced the idea that the volunteer army equally targets all Americans as potential conscripts. Because of this, the honor of posthumous citizenship is reinterpreted as belonging to the American history of imperialism, class, and racial stratification.
Y tu Mamá también/And Your Mother Too (Cuarón, 2001) and Machuca (Wood, 2004), two successful fil... more Y tu Mamá también/And Your Mother Too (Cuarón, 2001) and Machuca (Wood, 2004), two successful films that broke box office records in their respective countries, Mexico and Chile, are both coming-of-age stories that narrate unlikely male friendships that cross traditional Latin American social boundaries. Additionally, the female characters in both films function as catalysts of the unlikely male friendships and serve as bridges to the utopian spaces represented by the idyllic beach at the end of the long political tenure of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in Y tu Mamá, and the integrated catholic school during the brief but socially promising government of Salvador Allende in Machuca. At first glance, it appears as though the realism of each film rests on the injurious use of women as signs demarcating the boundaries of a patriarchal social space inhabited by men, and narrated by men to men. We argue, however, that the narratives also provide critiques of traditional sexualities and thus can be understood as relatively progressive texts that confirm the emergence of new masculinities in Mexico and Chile. 47 SHC 4 (1) 47-62
This article explores the textualisation of masculinity and race in the Mexican film Amores perro... more This article explores the textualisation of masculinity and race in the Mexican film Amores perros. The central argument is that the film displays Mexican masculinities in both a transgressive and conventional fashion. Transgression is articulated with narratives about life in Mexico City that challenge traditional Mexican masculinities, particularly as these relate to brown masculinities. These traditional masculinities are proven obsolete and futureless. Masculinities that are more progressive are textualised through reference to symbolic elements of manliness codified through whiteness and wealth. These are deemed promising, capable of development and oriented toward the future. However, in representing brownness as obsolete and whiteness as progressive, the film reproduces conventional ideas about masculinities, which are often given value through class and race. The film lays bare race, class and gender tensions in the modern Mexican state, exposing the ways in which ideas of progress and modernity can too easily reconstitute racial and class disenfranchisement.
After undergoing a mastectomy in 1991, Matuschka began photographing her nude body, and in these ... more After undergoing a mastectomy in 1991, Matuschka began photographing her nude body, and in these images she often highlighted the scar on her torso. Other women have acted in a similar fashion and have produced representations of their bodies after mastectomies. In this article the role the activity of photography plays in the process of self-formation of Matuschka is investigated. Borrowing from Michel Foucault's technologies of the self, photography is inscribed in the tradition of art as inquiry and art production as manipulation of the self, and it is argued that the stylistic ways in which Matuschka has represented her body add an ethical dimension to her work. This ethical component shows a desire to fashion a new self by acting on the way her body is seen.
Breast cancer impacts society at different levels and in different ways. It is an illness and as ... more Breast cancer impacts society at different levels and in different ways. It is an illness and as such it is of interest to scientists, policy makers and women at risk or already ill. In addition, the impact of breast cancer on large numbers of women in many Western societies and on patient activism has made the disease a matter of education, public discourse and debate. In breast cancer many discourses and types of social practices converge, but there is a limited subset that gives character to breast cancer as a social phenomenon: this includes media practices and representations, health campaigns, women's activism and policy debates regarding medical research and treatment. The present collection of essays addresses breast cancer as a social and educational phenomenon impacted by specialized debates on knowledge, science and education and the more general discourses of gender, illness and health that define it socially, politically and personally. The editors believe that the relationship between specialized debates and general discourses on breast cancer constitutes a dual pedagogy aimed at educating medical and science practitioners regarding the social and personal impact of the illness and at educating women on how to avoid the illness and, if that fails, on how to be a proper breast cancer sufferer. Such a dual pedagogy, and the sometimes contradictory discursive spaces it generates, gives meaning to the activities associated with treatment and research as well as the experiences of women at risk or ill.
“Drawing on the Athenian tradition of ‘wielding citizenship as a weapon to defend a contingently ... more “Drawing on the Athenian tradition of ‘wielding citizenship as a weapon to defend a contingently defined polis,’ Hector Amaya has crafted an elegant and sophisticated analysis of the contemporary policies designed to contain and criminalize Latina/os. Citizenship Excess demonstrates that he is one of the leading Latina/o Media Scholars today.”
—Angharad N. Valdivia, General Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies and author of Latina/os
Drawing on contemporary conflicts between Latino/as and anti-immigrant forces, Citizenship Excess illustrates the limitations of liberalism as expressed through U.S. media channels. Inspired by Latin American critical scholarship on the “coloniality of power,” Amaya demonstrates that nativists use the privileges associated with citizenship to accumulate power. That power is deployed to aggressively shape politics, culture, and the law, effectively undermining Latino/as who are marked by the ethno-racial and linguistic difference that nativists love to hate. Yet these social characteristics present crucial challenges to the political, legal, and cultural practices that define citizenship.
Amaya examines the role of ethnicity and language in shaping the mediated public sphere through cases ranging from the participation of Latino/as in the Iraqi war and pro-immigration reform marches to labor laws restricting Latino/a participation in English-language media and news coverage of undocumented immigrant detention centers. Citizenship Excess demonstrates that the evolution of the idea of citizenship in the United States and the political and cultural practices that define it are intricately intertwined with nativism.
Hector Amaya advances into new territory in Latin American and U.S. cinema studies in this innova... more Hector Amaya advances into new territory in Latin American and U.S. cinema studies in this innovative analysis of the differing critical receptions of Cuban film in Cuba and the United States during the Cold War. Synthesizing film reviews, magazine articles, and other primary documents, Screening Cuba compares Cuban and U.S. reactions to four Cuban films: Memories of Underdevelopment, Lucia, One Way or Another, and Portrait of Teresa.
In examining cultural production through the lens of the Cold War, Amaya reveals how contrasting interpretations by Cuban and U.S. critics are the result of the political cultures in which they operated. While Cuban critics viewed the films as powerful symbols of the social promises of the Cuban revolution, liberal and leftist American critics found meaning in the films as representations of anti-establishment progressive values and Cold War discourses. By contrasting the hermeneutics of Cuban and U.S. culture, criticism, and citizenship, Amaya argues that critical receptions of political films constitute a kind of civic public behavior.
"Truly groundbreaking. Amaya's provocative and illuminating analysis uses a Cuba-U.S. framework to address film criticism as a way of exercising political citizenship, providing a glimpse into the cultural and political effects of the Cold War."--Ana López, coeditor of The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts
“Screening Cuba joins a new generation of writings about Cuban culture and cultural politics. An original contribution to cinema reception studies."--Michael Chanan, author of Cuban Cinema
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Papers by Hector Amaya
of popular solution to the challenge of using videogames for meaningful social criticism and analyzes its mode of production as the key source for this popular potential. The creators use design techniques and gaming tactics common in virtual worlds to create a humanitarian game that problematizes the idea of free will. Instead of making free will a tool for progressing in the game, ICED uses roaming to create a frustrating game experience. This frustration is an affective lesson about undocumented immigration and the social and legal environment that casts individuals in a world void of freedom
and some basic human rights.
Books by Hector Amaya
—Angharad N. Valdivia, General Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies and author of Latina/os
Drawing on contemporary conflicts between Latino/as and anti-immigrant forces, Citizenship Excess illustrates the limitations of liberalism as expressed through U.S. media channels. Inspired by Latin American critical scholarship on the “coloniality of power,” Amaya demonstrates that nativists use the privileges associated with citizenship to accumulate power. That power is deployed to aggressively shape politics, culture, and the law, effectively undermining Latino/as who are marked by the ethno-racial and linguistic difference that nativists love to hate. Yet these social characteristics present crucial challenges to the political, legal, and cultural practices that define citizenship.
Amaya examines the role of ethnicity and language in shaping the mediated public sphere through cases ranging from the participation of Latino/as in the Iraqi war and pro-immigration reform marches to labor laws restricting Latino/a participation in English-language media and news coverage of undocumented immigrant detention centers. Citizenship Excess demonstrates that the evolution of the idea of citizenship in the United States and the political and cultural practices that define it are intricately intertwined with nativism.
In examining cultural production through the lens of the Cold War, Amaya reveals how contrasting interpretations by Cuban and U.S. critics are the result of the political cultures in which they operated. While Cuban critics viewed the films as powerful symbols of the social promises of the Cuban revolution, liberal and leftist American critics found meaning in the films as representations of anti-establishment progressive values and Cold War discourses. By contrasting the hermeneutics of Cuban and U.S. culture, criticism, and citizenship, Amaya argues that critical receptions of political films constitute a kind of civic public behavior.
"[A] clearly organized, well-written comparative study. . . . Recommended."--Choice
"Truly groundbreaking. Amaya's provocative and illuminating analysis uses a Cuba-U.S. framework to address film criticism as a way of exercising political citizenship, providing a glimpse into the cultural and political effects of the Cold War."--Ana López, coeditor of The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts
“Screening Cuba joins a new generation of writings about Cuban culture and cultural politics. An original contribution to cinema reception studies."--Michael Chanan, author of Cuban Cinema
of popular solution to the challenge of using videogames for meaningful social criticism and analyzes its mode of production as the key source for this popular potential. The creators use design techniques and gaming tactics common in virtual worlds to create a humanitarian game that problematizes the idea of free will. Instead of making free will a tool for progressing in the game, ICED uses roaming to create a frustrating game experience. This frustration is an affective lesson about undocumented immigration and the social and legal environment that casts individuals in a world void of freedom
and some basic human rights.
—Angharad N. Valdivia, General Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies and author of Latina/os
Drawing on contemporary conflicts between Latino/as and anti-immigrant forces, Citizenship Excess illustrates the limitations of liberalism as expressed through U.S. media channels. Inspired by Latin American critical scholarship on the “coloniality of power,” Amaya demonstrates that nativists use the privileges associated with citizenship to accumulate power. That power is deployed to aggressively shape politics, culture, and the law, effectively undermining Latino/as who are marked by the ethno-racial and linguistic difference that nativists love to hate. Yet these social characteristics present crucial challenges to the political, legal, and cultural practices that define citizenship.
Amaya examines the role of ethnicity and language in shaping the mediated public sphere through cases ranging from the participation of Latino/as in the Iraqi war and pro-immigration reform marches to labor laws restricting Latino/a participation in English-language media and news coverage of undocumented immigrant detention centers. Citizenship Excess demonstrates that the evolution of the idea of citizenship in the United States and the political and cultural practices that define it are intricately intertwined with nativism.
In examining cultural production through the lens of the Cold War, Amaya reveals how contrasting interpretations by Cuban and U.S. critics are the result of the political cultures in which they operated. While Cuban critics viewed the films as powerful symbols of the social promises of the Cuban revolution, liberal and leftist American critics found meaning in the films as representations of anti-establishment progressive values and Cold War discourses. By contrasting the hermeneutics of Cuban and U.S. culture, criticism, and citizenship, Amaya argues that critical receptions of political films constitute a kind of civic public behavior.
"[A] clearly organized, well-written comparative study. . . . Recommended."--Choice
"Truly groundbreaking. Amaya's provocative and illuminating analysis uses a Cuba-U.S. framework to address film criticism as a way of exercising political citizenship, providing a glimpse into the cultural and political effects of the Cold War."--Ana López, coeditor of The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts
“Screening Cuba joins a new generation of writings about Cuban culture and cultural politics. An original contribution to cinema reception studies."--Michael Chanan, author of Cuban Cinema