Brian L. Price (Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin) has been an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages at Wake Forest University since 2007. His areas of scholarly interest include 20th and 21st century Mexican literary, film, and cultural studies; Latin America’s historical novel; Hispanic appropriations of Anglo-American high modernism; and rock and roll as a countercultural movement. He is the author of Cult of Defeat in Mexico’s Historical Fiction: Failure, Trauma, and Loss (Palgrave, 2012). This book examines six recent historical novels that reconstruct significant moments of 19th century failure—a frustrated independence process, the loss of half the national territory, the establishment of a foreign empire on domestic soil, and the continued fascination with corrupt caudillos—and argue that fictional reconstructions of the national past must be understood as part of a broader debate about globalization, neoliberalism, political legitimacy, and crises afflicting Mexican communities today. The book builds upon postmodern historical fiction scholarship and couples close readings of novelistic texts with a historicist concern for understanding each novel both as the product and interlocutor of the context in which it appears. It further argues in favor of reading a salient rhetorical strategy, namely the rhetoric of failure, across two centuries of intellectual production and suggests that Mexico has developed an alternate model of nationalism rooted in the pragmatic deployment of failure rather than the triumphalist vision of success espoused by the United States and other Western powers.
Prof. Price has published articles and book chapters on Mexican literature in Comparative Literature, Latin American Literary Review, Explicación de Textos Literarios, AlterTexto, Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, Materias dispuestas: Juan Villoro ante la crítica (Ed. José Ramón Ruisánchez & Oswaldo Zavala, Cadaya, 2011), and Cristina Rivera Garza: Ningún crítico cuenta esto… (Ed. Oswaldo Estrada, Eón, 2010). He is also the coeditor of TransLatin Joyce: Reading James Joyce Globally in Ibero-American Literature as well as the editor of Asaltos a la historia: Reimaginando la ficción histórica hispanoamericana. He is currently working on a new book project, ¡Viva Rockotitlán!: Rock ‘N’ Roll and Mexican Literature, on the trajectory of literary representations of rock music in recent Mexican fiction. Like Cult of Defeat it will take a historicist approach to locating authors and their literary production within specific historical moments of production and social change over the last 50 years.

Education

2007:   Ph.D., Hispanic Literature, University of Texas at Austin

2003:   M.A., Hispanic Literature, University of Texas at Austin

2001:   B.A., Spanish Translation and Interpretation, Brigham Young University

“All Our Pretty Songs: Generation X Rock Literature in Mexico.” To be presented at the Latin American Studies Association conference. May 2013.

“The Art of Failure: Centennial Revisions of the Mexican Revolution.” To be presented at the Modern Language Association conference. January 2013.

 “Narcoculture: The Ethics of Representing Drug-Trafficking and Violence in Mexico.” Latin American Studies Association conference. May 2012.

“Mexico City Blues: José Agustín and the New Classical Music of Counterculture.” Transatlantic Hispanisms Symposium, WFU, April 2012.

“Bicentennial Blockbusters: Mexico’s Historical Imagination Goes to the Movies.” Carolina Colloquium on Romance Languages, UNC Chapel Hill, April 2012.

“Sixties Swansong: Rock, Nostalgia, and Juan Carlos de Llaca’s En el aire.” Congreso de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, UTEP, March 2012.

“Backgrounding the Revolution in the Films of Luis Estrada.” Mid-American Conference on Hispanic Literature, St. Louis, October 2010.

“Historical Necrophilia and the Bicentennial in Mexico.” Latin American Studies Association Conference, Toronto, Canada, October 2010.

 “Lucas Alamán y la apocalíptica Historia de Méjico.” Instituto de Investigación Literaria Iberoamericana Conference, Georgetown University, June 2010.

“La última cena de Chuy.”  Postrimerías: UC-Mexicanistas Conference, Mérida, México, April 2010.

“A Portrait of the Mexican Artist: Elizondo and Joyce.” Presented at the North American James Joyce Association conference, Buffalo, NY, June 2009.

“Non serviam: la rebeldía joyceana en México.” Presented at the Latin American Studies Association conference, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 2009.

“Where History Ends and the Corrido Begins: Popular Imaginations in Recent Literature of the Mexican Revolution.” Presented at the U of West Virginia Colloquium, Morgantown, WV, September 2008.

“El placer de la lectura: Nada cruel de José Ramón Ruisánchez.” Presented at the Fondo de Cultura Económica, Querétaro, Mexico, July 2008.

“Rosa Beltrán y las voces ilusas de la novela histórica.” Presented at the Carolina Conference on Romance Languages, UNC Chapel Hill, March 2008.

“Terapia para agringados: El sujeto transnacional en Hipotermia de Álvaro Enrigue.” Presented at the 13th Congreso de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, UTEP, March 2008.

“Un sentimiento positivo de rencor histórico: México y Estados Unidos en la novela histórica mexicana.” Presented at the Latin American Studies Association Conference, Montreal, Canada, September 2007.

“Making a Case for a Mexican Maximilian in Fernando del Paso’s Noticias del imperio.” Presented at the 12th Congreso de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, UTEP, March 2007.

Book

Cult of Defeat in Mexico’s Historical Fiction: Failure, Trauma, and Loss. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print.

“Non Serviam: James Joyce and Mexico.” Comparative Literature 64.2 (2012): 192-206. Print.

“Where History Ends and the Corrido Begins in Pedro Ángel Palou’s Zapata.” Latin American Literary Review 79 (2012): 45-60. Print.

“Talking About My Generation: Juan Villoro y la crónica del rock.” Materias dispuestas: Juan Villoro ante la crítica. Ed. José Ramón Ruisánchez Serra and Oswaldo Zavala. Spain: Candaya, 2011. 261-90. Print.

“Cristina Rivera Garza en las orillas de la historia.” Cristina Rivera Garza: Ningún crítico cuenta esto… Ed. Oswaldo Estrada. Mexico: UNC, UC-Mexicanistas & Eon, 2010. 111-34. Print.

“Terapia para agringados. La identidad transnacional en la literatura mexicana reciente.” Explicación de Textos Literarios 36.1-2 (2010): 138-52. Print.

“Miscege(nación) en O Cortiço.” TRANS-Revue de littérature générale et comparée 5.1 (2008). 31 January 2008. Web.

“Herencias e influencias: Jorge Luis Borges y la cuentística mexicana.” AlterTexto 7 (2006): 99-113. Print.

“Dos piedras rodando: El rock and roll en José Agustín y Luis Humberto Crosthwaite.” Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea 25 (2005): 93-102. Print.

“Metafísica fronteriza: La transubstanciación del indocumentado mexicano en la ‘Misa fronteriza’ de Luis Humberto Crosthwaite.” Forthcoming article in volume prepared by the UC-Mexicanistas.

TransLatin Joyce: Reading Joyce Globally in Ibero-American Literature.
Coeditor of a collection of scholarly essays about the influence of James Joyce on Hispanic literature. All of the essays have been finished and are under review by the editors. Book proposal sent to Palgrave Macmillan and accepted for peer review. The manuscript will be complete and submitted to Palgrave review by October 31, 2012.

Asaltos a la historia: Reimaginando la ficción histórica hispanoamericana.
Editor of a collection of scholarly essays that addresses the Latin American historical novel in the 21st century, with special emphasis on reassessing the current theoretical framework that informs our readings of the genre. All essays have been submitted and are currently under review. Book proposal pending. Manuscript will be complete and submitted for review by January 31, 2013.

“A Portrait of the Mexican Artist: The Dedalean Poetics of Salvador Elizondo.”
This article expands upon my Comparative Literature essay on Joyce in Mexico. Here I explore Elizondo’s first encounters with Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses while studying abroad in Canada as an adolescent, and argue that this chance encounter played a significant role in the formation of his own aesthetic development. The analysis focuses on Elizondo’s personal journals, his short stories, and his most popular novel, Farabeuf o la crónica de un instante. It has been provisionally accepted and will appear in TransLatin Joyce: Reading Joyce Globally in Ibero-American Literature. Deadline: October 15, 2012.

“Backgrounding the Revolution: The Presence of the Past in Luis Estrada’s Films.”
In this paper I offer a reading of director Luis Estrada’s trilogy of films about corruption that looks beyond the overt stories in order to consider how the films activate a series of revolutionary motifs during a moment of crisis that bears a striking resemblance to turn-of-the-century Mexico. I argue that the foregrounding of national symbols, slapstick comedy, and grotesque caricature typical of Estrada’s style draws the spectators’ attention away from what, to my mind, is an equally important element of his film idiom that, for lack of a better term, I will call backgrounding. Estrada carefully embeds major thematic elements in the backgrounds of his scenes in order to deepen the critique of corruption, neoliberalism, and governmental perfidy that appears in the foreground. To be submitted for publication in a special issue of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies entitled, “Temporalities in Latin American Film.” Submission deadline: November 30, 2012.

“Sixties Swansong: Rock, Nostalgia, and Juan Carlos de Llaca’s En el aire.”
Throughout the 1990s Mexican commercial cinema adopted and adapted US generic models including the romantic comedy and the sitcom in order to increase demand for newly privatized films. While critics have paid attention to these successful experiments, little has been said about flawed attempts to incorporate other popular US models. Specifically I am thinking here about nostalgia films like American Graffiti, Forrest Gump, and Dazed and Confused which structure their filmic recreations of the past through the use of periodized rock ‘n’ roll soundtracks. This essay considers the only rock nostalgia film produced during the period, En el aire, and offers an analysis of both its formal use of sound and an explanation for why this genre failed to take root in neoliberal Mexico. Deadline: January 31, 2013.

 “Luis Leal.” Celebrating Latino Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Cultural Traditions. Ed. María Herrera-Sobek. Vol. 2. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012. Print. 

“Pacuchos.” Celebrating Latino Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Cultural Traditions. Ed. María Herrera-Sobek. Vol. 3. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012. Print.   

“September 16th.” Celebrating Latino Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Cultural Traditions. Ed. María Herrera-Sobek. Vol. 3. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012. Print. 

“From Someone to Nothing and Back Again: Carlos Monsiváis ante la crítica.”  A contracorriente 7.2 (2010): 530-36. Web.

Review of Guerrero, Elisabeth. Confronting History and Modernity in Mexican Narrative. Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 44.1 (2010): 264-66. Print.

Review of González Abellás, Miguel Ángel. Hispanic Journal 29.2 (2008): 160-62. Print.

Review of Brescia, Pablo and Evelia Romano, eds. El ojo en el caleidoscopio: Las colecciones de textos integrados en Latinoamérica. Hispanófila 155 (2008): 117-18. Print.

Review of Ochoa, John. The Uses of Failure in Mexican Literature and Identity. Chasqui 35.1 (2006): 163-164.

Review of Hatfield, Elia. La representación del ejército mexicano en la literatura y el cine. Forthcoming in Chasqui (2013).

Review of Rangel, Dolores E. Artemio de Valle-Arizpe y su visión del México colonial. Forthcoming in Revista de Estudios Hispánicos (2013).

SPN 153          Intermediate Spanish
SPN 213          Hispanic Literature and Culture
SPN 216          Texts and Contexts in the Hispanic World
SPN 318          Spanish American Cultural and Literary Studies
SPN 373          Fictions of the Mexican Revolution (Spring 2008, Spring 2010)
SPN 379          20th Century Mexican Literature (Fall 2008)
SPN 379          History, Memory & Fiction (Spring 2009, Spring 2012)