Gender diversity, masculinity and culture in Spain, Argentina and Mexico
This project will carry out research on masculinity by studying its representations in literature, art and cinema in Spain, Argentina and Mexico (especially from 1970 onwards) created by lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and transgender persons. It will examine a wide range of artists: unquestionable referents in Spanish and Latin American cultures of the past decades alongside younger authors whose work, nonetheless, has achieved outstanding international projection, in order to deepen our understanding of the individual and collective, geographical and generational evolution of the transformation of traditional models of normative masculinity. Although the cultural interrelations among Spanish-speaking countries over the last decades may seem obvious, it is necessary to underscore that the common linguistic framework does not suggest, a priori, that the cultural productions of Spain, Argentina and Mexico are parallel cases; one of the complementary objectives will be to analyze the similarities and differences between these three states.
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Objectives
1 To explore the cultural representations of "sexual minorities" (lesbian, gay, transgender and transsexual) by the analysis of masculinity in the artistic production of renowned Spanish and Latin American artists of different generations, within a corpus defined by specific criteria.
2 To analyze if these representations can be considered faithful reflections or counter-discourses of hegemonic masculinity of the period in question, in this particular cultural landscape, and their linguistic characteristics.
3 To assess the value of adopting artistic production as a reliable marker of the cultural changes that take place in Spain, Argentina and Mexico, and to investigate why they are different.
4 To appraise critically the meaning and evolution of literary, artistic and audiovisual productions dealing with sexual diversity and masculinity in Hispanic cultures.