Speaking of...Researching Imagined Communities and Blind Photography in Spain and Latin America

Join us for the second talk in our “Speaking of” series. Humanities faculty Eduardo Lage-Otero and Kevin Goldstein will share the questions that frame their current research related to nationalist movements in Spain and blind photographers in Latin America. They will also delve into literary traditions and the redefining of photography theory, applying each to specific instances and individuals, as they discuss their current research projects.

Researching Imagined Communities through Texts and Contexts (Eduardo Lage-Otero)

How do you define your national identity in a country with several nations? Can we successfully integrate competing national narratives into one nationality?

In this talk, Eduardo Lage-Otero will look at two nationalist movements in Spain –Catalonia, and Galicia– through their literary traditions and historical trajectories. We will discuss Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities (1983) and Ernest Gellner’s writings on nationalism (1983) to shed light on these nationalist tensions within Spain. They will present various resources that can be used to research these movements and their significance to understand modern-day Spain.

Researching Blind Photography (Kevin Goldstein)

How do we read the work of blind photographers? How do we investigate an artistic practice for which no substantial body of academic literature exists?

Kevin Goldstein’s current research examines two blind photographers from Latin America, Sonia Soberats and Gerardo Nigenda, whose works interrogate photography as a visual medium. Apart from introducing these artists, his remarks concern dilemmas associated with building a new research paradigm. Because photography theory has not developed with blind people in mind, researching blind photographers means reading theory against the grain, redefining and “cripping” (to borrow a term from disability studies) photography itself.