Alarcon-Arana publishes volume on Hispanic moments of crisis and opportunity

Dr. Esther M. Alarcón-Arana, assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages, edited and published a volume in Spanish that draws connections between death, crises and opportunity in the Hispanic world from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Published by Peter Lang Publishing, the essays are presented in “Muerte y crisis en el mundo Hispano: Respuestas culturales” (“Death and Crises in the Hispanic World: Cultural Responses”). Each essay analyzes topics that are commonly depicted in Spanish literary texts, graphic novels, lyric operas and cinema.

Alarcon-Arana says the idea for the volume originated in 2015 while preparing course materials for her students. “Death and crises are two topics that receive lots of attention on TV, in art, literature … but separately,” she said. “What I am doing in this book is to put the two together.”

The book explores the intersection between crisis and death in different types of cultural representations – mainly in literature, cinema and other media – in the Hispanic world. Despite the fact that these two categories are often feared because of the negativity implicit in them, in this book they acquire a positive tone.

“Although crises and death are seen as these events of life we must fear, the articles of this book focus on one aspect of the etymology of the word ‘crisis,’ which is the idea of opportunity,” she said. “Those affected by crises and death have the potential of creating the change that will affect our own future lives and deaths.”

The book is divided into three parts: “Death, memory and national crisis,” “Crises and suicide” and “Gender, crisis and death.” Within the diversity of themes in this collection, the connection between the contributions draws attention to and examines a vision of crisis and death as a condition of possibility, offering new interdisciplinary points of view to the study of Hispanic cultures at different historical moments.

In addition to editing the volume, Alarcon-Arana writes both the introduction and chapter nine, “Crisis del amor romántico en Sab: Otro amor como subversión contra el patriarcado” (“Sab’s Crisis of Romantic Love: Another love as Subversion Against Patriarchy”).