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Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE; Affiliated Faculty of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

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Contact Information

Office Hours

  • Fall 2014 – Wednesday 1-3 PM

Biography

Eduardo Ledesma was born in Barcelona (Spain) in 1972 and moved to Chicago in 1984. After a decade as a practicing Structural Engineer he became a scholar of literature, film and new media.

Specializations / Research Interest(s)

20th and 21st century Latin American (including Brazil) and Iberian literature and film. Catalan literature and film. Media and cultural studies. Modernism(s). Avant-garde and neo-avant-garde poetry. Electronic literature and new media arts (digital poetry, hypertext, blog-narratives, locative fiction, cyberculture). Documentary and experimental film. The intersection between technology and disability studies. Word and Image relations. Luso-Hispanic transatlantic connections. Intersections between engineering and culture (science and technology studies),

Research Description

  • WORK IN PROGRESS:“André Vallias, y el tema de la traducción: TraklTakt un poema-collage digital.” Poesía y poéticas digitales/electrónicas/tecnos/New-Media en América Latina: Definiciones y exploraciones. Eds. Luis Correa-Díaz and Scott Weintraub.  Universidad Central (Bogotá, Colombia). (Forthcoming 2015).”‘Online Activist Eco-Poetry’: Techno-Cannibalism, Digital Indigeneity, and Ecological Resistance in Brazil..” The Internet as a Contestatory Medium in Latin America. Ed. Hilda Chacón. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Forthcoming 2015).

    Radical Poetry:Aesthetics, Politics, Technology and the Ibero-American Avant-Garde (1900-2015) – Book length manuscript. (advance contract, SUNY).

    “Intermediality and Hispano-Argentine Experimental Film: Subverting Media, Transgressing Borders.” – Article. (In Progress).

    “Where Violence meets Aesthetics: Charting Chilean Experimental Cinema from Raúl Ruiz to Pablo Larrain.” – Article. (In Progress).

    See selected completed publications below.

Education

  • PhD Romance Languages and Literatures. Harvard University. 2012.
  • MA Hispanic Literature. University of Illinois-Chicago. 2006.
  • MS Structural Engineering. Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. 1999.
  • BS Civil Engineering. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1995.

Grants

  • UIUC Campus Research Board Humanities Release Time Spring 2015

Courses

  • SPAN 535 Seminar in Spanish-American Lit. (From Futurism to Facebook: Technology and Latin American Cultural Production) FALL 2014
  • SPAN 572 Theory and Literary Criticism (including Latin American and Iberian Cultural Studies) FALL 2014
  • SPAN 535 Seminar in Spanish-American Lit. (The Latin American and Iberian Documentary Film)
  • SPAN 326 Fiction Film in Latin America (Contemporary Narratives of Globalization)
  • SPAN 316 Latin American Literatures II: The Latin American Short Story (Science, Technology and the Occult)
  • SPAN 326 Cultural Studies in the Americas II: Contemporary Luso-Hispanic Film

Publications

Book Contributions

  • “Through ‘Their’ Eyes: Internal and External Focalizing Agents in the Representation of Children and Violence in Iberian and Latin American Film.” Representing History, Class, and Gender in Spain and Latin America: Children and Adolescents in Film . Comp. Georgia Seminet. Ed. Carolina Rocha. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 151-170.
  • “From Avant-Garde to the Digital Age: Reconceptualizing Experimental Catalan Poetry.” The Future of Text and Image: Collected Essays on Literary and Visual Conjunctures. Ed. Ofra Amihay and Lauren Walsh. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. 231-270.

Journal Articles

  • Ledesma, Eduardo. “The Poetics and Politics of Computer Code in Latin America: Codework, Code Art, and Live Coding.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos (2015): (forthcoming).
  • “Ciencia-­‐ficción digital iberoamericana (mutantes, ciborgs y entes virtuales): La Red y la literatura electrónica del siglo XXI.” Revista Iberoamericana (2015): (forthcoming).
  • Ledesma, Eduardo. “Intermediality and Spanish Experimental Cinema: Text and Image Interactions in the Lyrical Films of the Barcelona School.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 14.3 (2014): <http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/kEEE3x6aYyBJWWpPQ3Hd/full>.
  • Ledesma, Eduardo. “Helena Lumbreras’ “Field for Men” (1973): Midway between Latin American Third Cinema and the Barcelona School.” Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas 11.3 (2014): 271-288.
  • Ledesma, Eduardo. “Close Readings of the Historic and Digital Avant-gardes.” Hispanic Issues Online 9 (2012): 237-262. 21 Aug. 2012. <http://hispanicissues.umn.edu/HybridStoryspaces.html>.

Special Issues of a Journal

  • Ledesma, Eduardo. “Catalan Futurism(s) and Technology: Poetry, Painting, Architecture and Film.” Iberian Futurisms. Spec. iss. of International Yearbook of Futurism Studies 3.1 (2013): 248-280.
  • Ledesma, Eduardo. “Literatura digital, Concretismo y la vanguardia histórica en Brasil: ¿qué tiene de viejo lo nuevo?.” Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese Literatures in the Digital Age (New Technologies and the Literary) . Spec. iss. of Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 14 (2010): 261-280.

Magazine Articles

  • Ledesma, Eduardo, and Haden Guest. “Ad Astra per Aspera: An Interview with Patricio Guzmán.” Cineaste 36.6. 1 Jun. 2011: 20-25.

SpanPort Affiliations

  • Assistant Professor, Spanish and Portuguese; Affiliated Faculty, Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies