As part of the IU Arts & Humanities Council’s March First Thursday Festival, acclaimed scholar Sophia McClennen will give a lecture on what Latin American cinema can teach us about globalization. McClennen’s talk addresses the issues that she discusses in her forthcoming book, “Globalization and Latin American Cinema: Towards a New Critical Paradigm.”

Studying the case of Latin American cinema, the talk analyzes one of the most public – and most exportable – forms of postcolonial national culture to argue that millennial era globalization demands entirely new frameworks for thinking about the relationship between politics, culture, and economic policies. Tracing the full life-cycle of films and studying blockbusters like “City of God,” “Motorcycle Diaries,” and “Children of Men,” this talk argues that neoliberal globalization has created a highly ambivalent space for cultural expression, one willing to market against itself as long as the stories sell.

Sophia McClennen is Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at Penn State University, and founding director of Penn State’s Center for Global Studies. She has written two books on satire and U.S. politics and media: “Colbert’s America: Satire and Democracy” and “Is Satire Saving Our Nation?: Mockery and American Politics” (co-authored with Remy Maisel). She has written extensively on questions of human rights and terrorism, and is co-author (with Jeffrey Di Leo, Henry Giroux, and Kenneth Saltman) of “Neoliberalism, Education, Terrorism: Contemporary Dialogues,” and co-editor (with Alexandra Schultheis Moore) of “The Routledge Companion to Human Rights and Literature.”

This event is presented by the College Arts & Humanities Institute. Sophia McClennen’s visit is co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), the Political and Civic Engagement Program (PACE), the Media School, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Department of Political Science, the Russian and East European Institute, and the Indiana Memorial Union Board.

Cost: Free

For more information contact:

Alex Teschmacher
(812) 856-1169
[email protected]