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Papers by Sara Potter

Mexican Literature as World Literature, 2021

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Alambique, 2018

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Revista de Estudios Hispánicos

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Alambique, 2018

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Chasqui, 2020

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Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2019

In this article, I show how Mexican artists Edgar Clément and Tony Sandoval work through represen... more In this article, I show how Mexican artists Edgar Clément and Tony Sandoval work through representations of mutable, gendered bodies to explore the manifestations of neoliberalism and the kinds of violence that are encouraged or facilitated within that socioeconomic framework. More specifically, I argue that both artists make use of a wide range of monsters and monstrous characters to revelatory effect as they employ a series of specifically Mexican monsters to relate multifaceted stories of violence on a personal and systemic level. This is particularly true regarding their construction and positioning of la Malinche or malinchista characters as the monstrous/revelatory centers of each text. Lastly, I argue that the use of an open medium such as comics/graphic narrative provides both artists with an ideal platform to relate issues of drug-related violence and trauma for two reasons: first, it interrogates what Oswaldo Zavala has called the critical limits of narconarrative, as both texts refuse to present drug or other violence as disconnected from the nation and the state. Secondly, this interrogative power is due in part to the way in which the Mexican reading public has historically been trained to consume and interact with graphic narrative.

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Alambique, 2018

**Please click on the link below (https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/alambique/vol6/iss1/5/) to acces... more **Please click on the link below (https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/alambique/vol6/iss1/5/) to access the Alambique site and download the article.**

Argentinian director Alejandro Brugués’s 2011 Cuban-Spanish film Juan de los muertos and Mexican playwright Pedro Valencia’s 2013 play Con Z de zombie spring from similar roots: both initially place the blame for each country’s zombie apocalypse at the feet of the United States. In Brugués’s film, the accusation is clear but never proven: news reports interspersed through the film state that the country is being invaded by “dissidents” paid by the U.S. government, though there is no political or military U.S. presence in the film beyond the symbolic presence of the country’s flag. In Valencia’s Mexico, the cause is entirely unknown: Randy, the zombie-narrator-protagonist, does not know how it began. He does, however, take satisfaction in the knowledge that the plague is heading north, since the undocumented zombie immigrants would be impossible to contain: “[L]o que hubiera dado por ver a un zombie latino partiéndole su madre a la border patrol, ¡por fin se habrían metido su ley antiimigrante por el culo!” (I.2, unpaginated) Both texts propose the idea of contagion as a double-edged sword that can be an instrument of resistance or oppression; as such, they underline the political and economic structures that dictate how human life is valued (and not) in both post-revolutionary countries. Brugués and Valencia portray the 21st century Latin American zombie as a vector of and participant in this double-edged contagion, unraveling and complicating apocalyptic outbreak narratives while articulating sociopolitical critiques of their respective countries that operate on a national and global level.

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Alambique, 2018

**Please click on the link below to access the article.** This introduction lays out key questio... more **Please click on the link below to access the article.**

This introduction lays out key questions that the contributors to The Transatlantic Undead: Zombies in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Cultures aim to engage. Regardless of its exact articulation, the zombie constantly serves as a means for criticizing undemocratic elements of society. As the articles in this collection show, the nature of oppression differs depending on where a particular work of literary and cultural production is articulated. Furthermore, the zombie’s role in critiquing said social order also changes depending on numerous factors ranging from the author to the cultural context in which it appears. Nevertheless, when viewed in their entirety, the articles of this volume show that the zombie continues to be a surprisingly versatile figure for social critique.

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Confluencia, 2017

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This article examines Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa’s novel Duerme (1994). The narrator-protagon... more This article examines Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa’s novel Duerme (1994). The narrator-protagonist, Claire, occupies various racial, social, and gendered identities throughout—both by choice and by obligation. Barthes’s notion of pleasure in The Pleasure of the Text suggests a productive reading of Duerme as a text that remains rooted in culture while unsettling the reader’s relationship to that culture, and thus to language and to history. This reading of Claire’s refusal of normalized behavior interrogates colonial social structures while also serving as a broader metaphor for a successful revolution in contemporary Mexico.

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Entry on Frida Kahlo from Iconic Mexico: An Encyclopedia from Acapulco to Zócalo, Vol. 1. Ed. Eri... more Entry on Frida Kahlo from Iconic Mexico: An Encyclopedia from Acapulco to Zócalo, Vol. 1. Ed. Eric Zolov. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2015. 294-99. Print.

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Potter, Sara. "Fluidity and Fixity in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands." The American Mosaic: The Lati... more Potter, Sara. "Fluidity and Fixity in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands." The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience. ABC-CLIO, 2015. Web.

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Gaceta Frontal: Gaceta digital de crítica y cultura, Nov 3, 2014

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Ensayando el ensayo: Artilugios del género en la literatura mexicana contemporánea, 2013

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Confluencia, Spring 2012, 26.2

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Book Reviews by Sara Potter

This review appears in Vol. 4 of Textos Híbridos (2015) and can be read by clicking on the link.

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Mexican Literature as World Literature, 2021

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Alambique, 2018

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Revista de Estudios Hispánicos

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Alambique, 2018

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Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Chasqui, 2020

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Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2019

In this article, I show how Mexican artists Edgar Clément and Tony Sandoval work through represen... more In this article, I show how Mexican artists Edgar Clément and Tony Sandoval work through representations of mutable, gendered bodies to explore the manifestations of neoliberalism and the kinds of violence that are encouraged or facilitated within that socioeconomic framework. More specifically, I argue that both artists make use of a wide range of monsters and monstrous characters to revelatory effect as they employ a series of specifically Mexican monsters to relate multifaceted stories of violence on a personal and systemic level. This is particularly true regarding their construction and positioning of la Malinche or malinchista characters as the monstrous/revelatory centers of each text. Lastly, I argue that the use of an open medium such as comics/graphic narrative provides both artists with an ideal platform to relate issues of drug-related violence and trauma for two reasons: first, it interrogates what Oswaldo Zavala has called the critical limits of narconarrative, as both texts refuse to present drug or other violence as disconnected from the nation and the state. Secondly, this interrogative power is due in part to the way in which the Mexican reading public has historically been trained to consume and interact with graphic narrative.

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Alambique, 2018

**Please click on the link below (https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/alambique/vol6/iss1/5/) to acces... more **Please click on the link below (https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/alambique/vol6/iss1/5/) to access the Alambique site and download the article.**

Argentinian director Alejandro Brugués’s 2011 Cuban-Spanish film Juan de los muertos and Mexican playwright Pedro Valencia’s 2013 play Con Z de zombie spring from similar roots: both initially place the blame for each country’s zombie apocalypse at the feet of the United States. In Brugués’s film, the accusation is clear but never proven: news reports interspersed through the film state that the country is being invaded by “dissidents” paid by the U.S. government, though there is no political or military U.S. presence in the film beyond the symbolic presence of the country’s flag. In Valencia’s Mexico, the cause is entirely unknown: Randy, the zombie-narrator-protagonist, does not know how it began. He does, however, take satisfaction in the knowledge that the plague is heading north, since the undocumented zombie immigrants would be impossible to contain: “[L]o que hubiera dado por ver a un zombie latino partiéndole su madre a la border patrol, ¡por fin se habrían metido su ley antiimigrante por el culo!” (I.2, unpaginated) Both texts propose the idea of contagion as a double-edged sword that can be an instrument of resistance or oppression; as such, they underline the political and economic structures that dictate how human life is valued (and not) in both post-revolutionary countries. Brugués and Valencia portray the 21st century Latin American zombie as a vector of and participant in this double-edged contagion, unraveling and complicating apocalyptic outbreak narratives while articulating sociopolitical critiques of their respective countries that operate on a national and global level.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Alambique, 2018

**Please click on the link below to access the article.** This introduction lays out key questio... more **Please click on the link below to access the article.**

This introduction lays out key questions that the contributors to The Transatlantic Undead: Zombies in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Cultures aim to engage. Regardless of its exact articulation, the zombie constantly serves as a means for criticizing undemocratic elements of society. As the articles in this collection show, the nature of oppression differs depending on where a particular work of literary and cultural production is articulated. Furthermore, the zombie’s role in critiquing said social order also changes depending on numerous factors ranging from the author to the cultural context in which it appears. Nevertheless, when viewed in their entirety, the articles of this volume show that the zombie continues to be a surprisingly versatile figure for social critique.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Confluencia, 2017

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

This article examines Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa’s novel Duerme (1994). The narrator-protagon... more This article examines Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa’s novel Duerme (1994). The narrator-protagonist, Claire, occupies various racial, social, and gendered identities throughout—both by choice and by obligation. Barthes’s notion of pleasure in The Pleasure of the Text suggests a productive reading of Duerme as a text that remains rooted in culture while unsettling the reader’s relationship to that culture, and thus to language and to history. This reading of Claire’s refusal of normalized behavior interrogates colonial social structures while also serving as a broader metaphor for a successful revolution in contemporary Mexico.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Entry on Frida Kahlo from Iconic Mexico: An Encyclopedia from Acapulco to Zócalo, Vol. 1. Ed. Eri... more Entry on Frida Kahlo from Iconic Mexico: An Encyclopedia from Acapulco to Zócalo, Vol. 1. Ed. Eric Zolov. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2015. 294-99. Print.

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Potter, Sara. "Fluidity and Fixity in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands." The American Mosaic: The Lati... more Potter, Sara. "Fluidity and Fixity in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands." The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience. ABC-CLIO, 2015. Web.

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Gaceta Frontal: Gaceta digital de crítica y cultura, Nov 3, 2014

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Ensayando el ensayo: Artilugios del género en la literatura mexicana contemporánea, 2013

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Confluencia, Spring 2012, 26.2

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Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

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This review appears in Vol. 4 of Textos Híbridos (2015) and can be read by clicking on the link.

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Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 51.3 (Octubre 2017): 728-31

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Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 51.2 (Junio 2017): 487-89

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