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The Unbearable Lightness of Bones: a Colloquium by Professor Brad Epps

Date
Mon May 20th 2013, 12:00 - 1:15pm
Location
Pigott Hall (Building 260), Room
252
252
Speakers): Professor Brad Epps
Join the DLCL for a colloquium with Professor Brad Epps (Harvard University & Cambridge University)! Lunch will be served!
This talk examines the interplay of affect and memory in visual and verbal works that grapple with the fate of the disappeared and the plight of those who remember them and search for their remains in the Atacama desert of Chile during and after the dictatorship. Focusing on Patricio鈥檚 Guzm谩n鈥檚 lyrical documentary film, Nostalgia de la luz (2010), it also considers Paula Allen鈥檚 photographic essay Flores en el desierto and Ra煤l Zurita鈥檚 鈥渓and art,鈥 all of which represent and 鈥渞ework鈥 the devastating effects of state-sponsored violence in the Atacama desert, as well as Guzm谩n鈥檚 film Chile, la memoria obstinada (1997), which at once elicits and reflects on the variegated affective charge of the military coup and its remembrance and forgetting in post-dictatorial Chile.
Brad Epps is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Professor Epps is fluent in Spanish, French, and Catalan with reading knowledge of Portuguese, Galician, and Italian. He has written a variety of critically acclaimed books such as, Spain Beyond Spain: Modernity, Literary History, and National Identity, with Luis Fern谩ndez-Cifuentes and All About Almod贸var: A Passion for Cinema, with Despina Kakoudaki. Professor Epps has also published many articles on the subjects of sexuality, ethics and Hispanic art and culture such as, 鈥淧roper Conduct: Reinaldo Arenas, Fidel Castro, and the Politics of Appearance鈥 in The Journal of the History of Sexuality and 鈥淭o be (a Part) of a Whole: Constitutional Patriotism and the Paradox of Democracy in the Wake of the Spanish Constitution of 1978鈥 in the Revista de Estudios Hisp谩nicos. Additionally, Professor Epps is currently working on two more books, The Ethics of Promiscuity and Barcelona and Cinema.