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Anna Corrigan

St. Edmund's College
ac919@cam.ac.uk

Biography:

I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and received my BA in Comparative Literature from Cornell University, where I graduated summa cum laude in 2014. I became interested in the cultural history of the Southern Cone during periods of research and residence in Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Santiago between 2008 and 2013. After graduating from Cornell, I moved to Europe to complete an Erasmus Mundus Crossways in Cultural Narratives Master's degree funded by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Commission. During this time, I studied at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, University of St. Andrew's, and the Universidade Nova da Lisboa, and completed a thesis on humor and the 'Sueños' photomontages made by Grete Stern in Buenos Aires from 1948-1952. Between 2016 and 2019, I worked as a freelance editor and indexer for books published by Oxford University Press, Columbia University Press, Routledge, and Intellect. I began my Gates Cambridge-funded PhD in 2019 at the University of Cambridge, where I have taught on courses at the Centre of Latin American Studies, Spanish Department, and the History of Art. My areas of concentration are art criticism, theory, modernity, and the intersection of politics and visual culture in the recent histories of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. I have also taught and researched Latin American conceptual art, twentieth-century literature and poetry, queer and feminist culture histories, and translation

Research:

My doctoral project examines how assembly emerged as a simultaneously aesthetic and political practice in the dictatorial regimes in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay (1973-2019). Through a comparative transregional approach, the thesis seeks to understand how instances of resistance during these regimes, and the politics of memory forged in their wake, hinge on the simultaneously creative and political act of assembling. I explore how artworks (by artists including León Ferrari, Cecilia Vicuña, Juan Angel Urruzola, Clemente Padín, Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Graciela Gutiérrez Marx, Lucila Quieto and Marcelo Brodsky) present opportunities for assembling through innovative formal techniques that approach the creative process as constitutive of social multitudes. These works frame various instances of political assembly (protest, petitions, and debate) as creative acts by mobilizing multitudes of participants, employing techniques of collage, montage, performance and assemblage. Theoretically, I draw my definition of assemblage from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I argue that the precarious nature of assemblage implies a politics of recognition, and thus transformation, using Judith Butler's theory of performative assembly. In conversation with the work of Manuel Castells, Bruno Latour, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe, I consider the intersection of philosophies of assemblage/assembly and networked communication to understand how networks facilitate and complicate the democratic imperatives of communication, exchange, antagonism and dissent. Finally, I engage with debates surrounding historical memory spearheaded by thinkers such as Marianne Hirsch, Nelly Richard and Beatriz Sarlo to consider the imperative to remember and record national trauma across generations.

Selected Publications:

  • "Photographic Assembly in Post-dictatorial Argentina and Uruguay." Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, 2022.
  • with Samuel Ritholtz, "Transformative Aesthetics after War: Repair in the works of Lucila Quieto and Doris Salcedo." Security Dialogue Special Issue: Women's Rights After War [in print].
  • "@CollageChile y el testimonio en red." Collage Chile: Manifiestos. collagechile.cl. [forthcoming].
  • with Dr. Susanna Martins, "Feminism, Laughter, and Photomontage: Comedic Effect and the Sueños" in Photography Performing Humor, Liesbeth Decan and Mieke Bleyen eds. Leuven University Press, 2019.

Teaching Experience:

  • SP5: Latin American Culture and History
  • SP13: Contemporary Latin American Culture
  • SPB2: Spanish to English Translation
  • History of Art: Alternative Art and Politics in Latin America, 1928-1988

Supervisor: Dr. Joanna Page