Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
School of Humanities

Latin American Culture. Psychoanalysis. Philosophy. Political Theory. Popular Culture and Insurgency. Photography

www.humanities.uci.edu/spanishandportuguese/v2/faculty/legras/legras.html

I received my Ph.D from Duke University with a dissertation about the contribution of popular culture to the constitution of a modern Argentina at the end of the nineteenth century. I have worked in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at Georgetown University between 1999 and 2005. During that period, I also held visiting positions in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UCI and at the Romance Studies and Latin American Studies program at Johns Hopkins University. I have published two books, Literature and Subjection.The Economy of Writing and Marginality in Latin America (2008); and Culture and Revolution. Violence, Memory and the Making of Modern Mexico (2017). I have recently completed a third book manuscript (Reality in Question) in which I study the recurrent crises in the hegemonic notion of reality in twentieth century Latin America and the role played by race, indigenousness and gender in these crises.
Regularly, I teach classes on Latin American film and Visual Studies in a Latin American context. I am currently working on a documentary on the Argentine psychoanalyst Marie Langer. This collaborative project allows me to merge some of my most persistent interests such as psychoanalysis, film and photography, and political theory.
I have authored some 50 academic essays in which I articulate my theoretical interests with specific regions and cultural productions -from film and theater to photography and contemporary social movements.

Selected recent publications

“Inheritances of Carlos Colombino. Painting and the Making of a Democratic Paraguay,” in F. Pous, A. Quin and M. Viera eds. Authoritarianism, Cultural History and Political Resistance in Latin America. Exposing Paraguay. Cham (Switzerland), Palgrave-Macmillan, 2018 (107-123)

“Militant Cinema and the Struggle Against Neo-Liberalism in Argentina” sub-section of the collective chapter “New Frameworks. Collaborative and Indigenous Media Activism,” coauthored with Freya Schiwy, Amalia Cordova and David Wood; in Marvin D’Lugo, Ana M. López and Laura Podalsky eds, The Routledge Companion to Latin American Cinema. LondonNew York: 2018 (204-222)


“Cine y Cardenismo. El tiempo de la máquina.” [Film and Cardenism. The Time of the Machine] in Cardenismo: Auge y caída de un legado social. Boston: Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, 2017 (257-279)


“The Rule of Impurity. Decolonial Theory and the Question of Literature,” in Juan G. Ramos and Tara Daly eds. Decolonial Approaches to Latin American Literatures and Cultures. New York: Palgrave-McMillan, 2016 (19-35)

“Seeing Women Photographed in Revolutionary Mexico.” Discourse, 38: 1 (2016) 3-21.

"Las formas de la protesta social. Lugares e itinerarios ciudadanos en la perspectiva de la insurgencia popular y la inscripción soberana.” In Graciela Maglia, Leonor Hernánez Fox, eds., Memorias, saberes y redes de las culturas populares en America Latina. Bogota: Universidad Externado de Colombia, 2016 (225-250)

"Bio-política. Viscicitudes de una idea." [Bio-Politics. Vicissitudes of a notion] in Mabel Moraña and Sánchez Prado eds. Heridas Abiertas. Bio Política y Representación en América Latina. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2014 (31-46).

“Slavery in Latin America” Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Studies, Ray Sangeeta, Henry Schwarz, Jose Luis Villacanas, Alberto Moreiras eds. Blackwell. On-line resource. 2016

“Psychoanalysis in Latin America” Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Studies, 2016. Ray Sangeeta, Henry Schwarz, Jose Luis Villacanas, Alberto Moreiras eds. Blackwell. On-line resource.

"José María Arguedas and Ricardo Piglia, Two Radical Views on Political Subjection in Latin America." Novel, A Forum on Fiction. 47: 1 (132-148) 2014.

Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=5282

Last updated
01/05/2020