15 May Almodóvar’s Queer Cinematic Excesses: Verbal-Visual Disjunctions, Haptic Intensities and the Post-filmic Turn
Brad Epps (Spanish,University of Cambridge)
Monday, May 15, 2017 / 2:00 PM
Alumni Hall, Mosher House
Foregrounding the human form, its expanses and folds, comings and goings, the cinema of Pedro Almodóvar also foregrounds its artful, artificial construction, its mutability and adaptability, its susceptibility to modification and alteration. The cinematic modification and alteration of the human entails not just cosmetic and performative manipulation, but also a certain cybernetic intensification by which the organic substratum of the human is itself unsettled. In this talk, Epps will track some of the many transformations, modifications and alterations that comprise a paradoxical constant in the work of Spain’s most celebrated living director.
Brad Epps is Professor of Spanish, and Head of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Cambridge. He has published extensively on modern literature, film, art, architecture, urban theory, queer theory, and immigration from Spain, Latin America, Hispanophone Africa, and Catalonia. Among his key publications are Passing Lines: Immigration and Sexuality (with Bill Johnson-González and Keja Valens); All About Almodóvar: A Passion for Cinema (with Despina Kakoudaki); a special issue of Catalan Review on Barcelona and modernity, and a special issue of GLQ (with Jonathan Katz) on lesbian theorist Monique Wittig, among others.
Sponsored by the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Dept. of Film and Media Studies, the Dept. of French and Italian, the Comparative Literature Program, and the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program.