Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series: Nic Poppe

In the Movie Listings: Social Imaginaries and Mexican Film Culture in late-1930s San Antonio

Nic Poppe, Department of Luso-Hispanic Studies, will give a talk as part of the 2019-20 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series.

In movie theaters, spectators come to inhabit distinct social imaginaries whose meanings are individual and collective negotiations between two understandings of the cinema, the space onscreen and the one that surrounds it. Between cultures, as well as between languages, Mexican spectators in late-1930s San Antonio (if they frequented the cinema) negotiated often contradictory social imaginaries not only in the city’s movie theaters, but also in films themselves. Along with other mass experiences mediated by technology (phonograph, radio, popular press, telephone, etc.), the cinema represented a way in which Mexican spectators at the time were able to understand themselves and their situation of in-betweenness.

Refreshments will be served.