Struggles for Recognition: Melodrama and Visibility in Latin American Silent Film

by Juan Sebastián Ospina León

Overview

Struggles for Recognition traces the emergence of melodrama in Latin American silent film and silent film culture. Juan Sebastián Ospina León draws on extensive archival research to reveal how melodrama visualized and shaped the social arena of urban modernity in early twentieth-century Latin America. Analyzing sociocultural contexts through film, this book demonstrates the ways in which melodrama was mobilized for both liberal and illiberal ends, revealing or concealing social inequities from Buenos Aires to Bogotá to Los Angeles. Ospina León critically engages Euro-American and Latin American scholarship seldom put into dialogue, offering an innovative theorization of melodrama relevant to scholars working within and across different national contexts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520305434
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	03/16/2021
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Juan Sebastián Ospina León is an Independent Scholar.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Melodrama and Visibility
1. "Filmdom" before and during the Great War
2. Buenos Aires Shadows: Urban Space, Fallen Women, and Destitute Men
3. Bogotá and Medellín: A Tale of Two Cities and Conservative Progress
4. Orizaba, Veracruz: Yesterday's Melodrama Today
5. South to North: Latin American Modernities
Conclusion: Struggles for Recognition

List of Abbreviations
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Ospina’s book will become essential reading for scholars of silent cinema, melodrama, and Latin America."

Nineteenth Century Theater and Film

"A solid and enlightening piece of scholarship that makes an important contribution to film studies and the history of twentieth-century Latin America more broadly."

Hispanic American Historical Review

"Struggles for Recognition, given its subject, scope, and method, will be of interest to melodrama scholars; film scholars, particularly historians; and scholars of Latin American cultural studies."

Film Quarterly