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 argues 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.
Contact Information
E-mail: pricebl@wfu.edu
Phone: (336) 758-4572
Office: Greene Hall, 550
Publications
Book
Cult of Defeat in Mexico’s Historical Fiction: Failure, Trauma, and Loss. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
“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.
Forthcoming Publications
“Metafísica fronteriza: La transubstanciación del indocumentado mexicano en la ‘Misa fronteriza’ de Luis Humberto Crosthwaite.” Forthcoming article in volume prepared by the UC-Mexicanistas.
Edited Volumes in Progress
TransLatin Joyce: Reading Joyce Globally in Ibero-American Literature.
Co-editor 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.
Courses
SPN 153: Intermediate Spanish
SPN 213: Hispanic Literature and Culture
SPN 216: Texts and Contexts in the Hispanic World
SPN 373: Literatures of the Mexican Revolution
SPN 379: Special Topics in Spanish American Literature and Culture: 20th Century Mexican Literature*
SPN 379: Special Topics in Spanish American Literature and Culture: History, Memory and Fiction*
*Pre-approved Latin American and Latino Studies course
