Antonio Barrenechea, associate professor of English, has been appointed the Institute for American Universities College Resident Fellow, Aix-en-Provence, France, for the academic year 2016-17.  His residency will coincide with a sabbatical project on how the South American underground cinema reinvents Hollywood and European "trash" and avant-garde film sources.

Barrenechea Appointed IAU College Resident Fellow in Aix-en-Provence, France

Comparative American Studies

Comparative Literature Association

International American Studies Association

American Comparative Literature Association

International Association of Inter-American Studies

Hemispheric Indigenous Studies: Introduction

Good Neighbor/Bad Neighbor: Boltonian Americanism and Hemispheric Studies

Conquistadors, Monsters, and Maps: Moby-Dick in a New World Context

Hemispheric Horrors: Celluloid Vampires from the "Good Neighbor" Era

Barrenechea Surveys Career of Thomas Pynchon in Review Essay

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University of Mary Washington

Antonio Barrenechea is a scholar and teacher of literature of the Americas and cinema. His first book is America Unbound: Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies (University of New Mexico Press, 2016). It brings together the disciplines of comparative literature and hemispheric studies by tracing “New World” historical imaginaries in novels from the United States, Latin America, and Francophone Canada. He is also coeditor of “Hemispheric Indigenous Studies,” a special issue of Comparative American Studies (2013). Dr. Barrenechea has contributed articles and reviews to Comparative Literature, Revista Iberoamericana, American Literature, and several other journals and collections. The forthcoming “Hemispheric Studies Beyond Suspicion” was awarded the 2014-2016 prize for best essay by the International Association of Inter-American Studies. During a recent fellowship at the Institut Américain Universitaire in Aix-en-Provence, France, he lectured in Europe and provided an interview for the Italian journal América Crítica. Dr. Barrenechea is currently writing “Hemispheric Horrors: Monster, Trash, and Exploitation Cinema of the Americas,” a book on the relationship between shock and avant-garde aesthetics in cinema produced at the fringes of North and South American film capitals. He serves on the boards of the International American Studies Association, the International Association of Inter-American Studies, and Comparative American Studies.

Comparative Literature

Cinema Studies

Literature of the Americas

It's the Summer of Love again as streaming services unleash romcoms for the season

Why shows like 'Dead to Me' are helping us embrace dark comedy like never before

Barrenechea Selected for Jessie Ball duPont Summer Seminar

Barrenechea Contributes to Multimedia Encyclopedia

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Professor

  UMW’s experts are in the news and just recently Antonio Barrenechea, associate professor of English, was interviewed for two articles in the web magazine MEAWW.  The first was on the relationship between summer and romantic comedies and why that season in particular seems to hold the ideal climate for on-screen love. "The Canadian literary theorist, Northrop Fry, provides insight into its origins. As with the seasons of the year, genres deploy archetypes of birth, maturation, decay, death, and rebirth, all within natural cycles," said Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington.  Professor Barrenechea opines that for Fry, comedy belongs to spring, and romance to summer. "Nature as background thus directs the foreground of social ordering and human affairs. Greenery and florals are to the romantic comedy as deserts are to the Western, and dark places and climates are to horror," Barrenechea added.  This is translated beautifully on screen in movies like 'Call Me By Your Name', 'My Best Friend's Wedding', and the 'Before Sunrise' movies.  The second probed the link between intelligence and dark humor.  In this piece, our expert explained our passion for dark humor and death. Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington has a different opinion of 21st Century's vicarious morbidity fans. "Dark humor responds to our absurd condition with the armor of world-weariness. Except that, of course, we also know we can't really laugh such troubles away — which is why dark humor has a fatalistic dimension built into it," he said.  Between Netflix, streaming services, TV, cable and the big screen – we are always talking about movies.  If you are covering, don’t hesitate to let one of our experts help with your stories.  Antonio Barrenechea, associate professor of English, specializes in literature of the Americas and the cinema. He’s available to speak with media, simply click on his icon to arrange an interview.  

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