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About the book:
The White Indians of Mexican Cinema (SUNY University Press, 2022) theorizes the development of a unique form of racial masquerade―the representation of Whiteness as Indigeneity―during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, from the 1930s to the 1950s. García Blizzard argues that this trope works to reconcile two divergent discourses about race in postrevolutionary Mexico: the government- sponsored celebration of Indigeneity and mestizaje, on the one hand, and the idealization of Whiteness, on the other. Through the analysis of twenty films―including several classics of the melodrama indigenista genre, such as María Candelaria (1944), Maclovia (1948), and Tizoc (1957)―this book illuminates how Golden Age films produced diverse, even contradictory messages about the place of Indigeneity in the national culture.
About the speaker:
Dr. Mónica García Blizzard is Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of Film Studies and Latin American Cultural Studies, focusing on race, marginality, and national identity in Mexican cinema. She is the author of The White Indians of Mexican Cinema: Racial Masquerade throughout the Golden Age, published in SUNY University Press’s Latin American Cinema Series in 2022.