Isabel M. Estrada
Education
Isabel Estrada received her B.A. from the Universidad de Sevilla, Spain, an M.A. in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of Michigan, and her Ph.D. in Modern Peninsular Literature from Columbia University in 1999.
Research Interests
Prof. Estrada is the author of El documental cinematográfico y televisivo contemporáneo: memoria, representación y formación de la identidad democrática española (Tamesis 2012), which examines how a selected group of documentaries made since 1995 for both film and television inform the debate centered on the so-called “recuperation of memory” of the Spanish Civil War and dictatorship. The book contends that these documentaries modify Spanish identity as it was conceived by the teleological historical project of the transition. The narrative of mass media should be examined in order to comprehend the process of the “recovery of memory” that culminated in the Law of Historical Memory (2007). Prof. Estrada carries out a comparative analysis of the visual discourse of the documentary and the narrative discourses of history and testimony, paying special attention to the relations of power among them. Using theoretical frameworks provided by Theodor Adorno, Michael Renov, Elizabeth Jelin and Paul Ricoeur, this comparison focuses on the diffuse zone between the public and the private, knowledge and feeling, and the political and the personal. This project will be complemented by a study of the memory of the dictatorships in Argentina and Chile through their representation in the documentary genre. The methodological parameters used to analyze the memory of the dictatorship in Spain will serve as a frame with which to initiate a comparative study of the transitions in both countries and the way in which these processes negotiate the legacy of their respective dictatorships.
Publications
In addition to her book, Prof. Estrada has published articles in refereed journals such as Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, Hispanic Review, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, España Contemporánea, Catalan Review, and Revista Hispánica Moderna. She has also contributed to the volumes Approaches to Teaching the Works of Carmen Martín Gaite (2011), Perceptions of the Holocaust in Modern Spanish Culture (Leipzig Studies on Jewish History and Culture, 2009), and Historias de la pequeña pantalla: Representaciones históricas en la televisión de la España democrática (2008).
