Claudia Schaefer
Rush Rhees Professor
Professor of Modern Languages and Cultures
Professor of Film and Media Studies
Program head fall 2024, minors, transfers, and study abroad credit for minors, Take Five
PhD, Washington University in St. Louis
- Office Location
- 418 Lattimore Hall
- Telephone
- (585) 275-4251
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. and by appointment
Research Overview
Research Interests
- Nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first-century Hispanic literatures and cultures
- Spanish cinema
- critical theory
- popular culture
- the visual arts
- Spanish modernity
- the culture of science in Spain
- surrealism in Spain
- digital humanities
Courses Offered (subject to change)
- SP 200: Advanced Spanish Composition (Fall 2018)
- SP 202: The Forging of a Nation: Literary Ideas and Aesthetics from the Romantics to Democratic Spain (Spring 2018)
- SP 205: Spain: Past, Present, and Future (Spring 2017)
- SP 249D: Buñuel, Dalí, Lorca: Surrealism in Spain and Beyond (Fall 2018)
- SP 249M: Out of the Wings: Contemporary Spain on Stage (Spring 2016)
- SP 272: Postcards from Spain: Visitors, Observers, and Imaginary Geographies (Fall 2015)
- SP 280: The Transhispanic Supernatural: Ghosts, Witches, and Vampires in Film and Literature from Spain and Spanish America – co-taught with Raúl Rodríguez-Hernández (Spring 2017)
- SP 281: Other Worlds and Underworlds (Spring 2014)
- SP 288: Spanish Film (Fall 2014)
- SP 292: Politics, Portraits, Public Spaces: The Power of Photography in Spain and Spanish America (Fall 2014)
Selected Publications
Books and Monographs
- Lens, Laboratory, Landscape: Observing Modern Spain. State U of New York P, 2014. SUNY Series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture.
- Frida Kahlo: A Biography. Greenwood P, 2008. Greenwood Biographies.
- Bored to Distraction: Cinema of Excess in End-of-the-Century Mexico and Spain. State U of New York P, 2003. SUNY Series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture.
- Danger Zones: Homosexuality, National Identity, and Mexican Culture. U of Arizona P, 1996.
- Textured Lives: Women, Art, and Representation in Modern Mexico. U of Arizona P, 1992.
- Juan Goytisolo: Del "realismo crítico" a la utopía. José Porrúa Turanzas, 1984. Ensayos.
Articles and Book Chapters
- With Raúl Rodríguez-Hernández. "From Utopia to Uchronia: After-images of Revolutionary History in Contemporary Mexican Film." Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinema, vol. 13, no. 2, Jun. 2016, pp. 137-57. Ingenta Connect, doi:10.1386/slac.13.2.137_1.
- With Raúl Rodríguez-Hernández. "Magic Mexican Modernity: The Shifting Image of Witches and Witchcraft in the Movies." The Supernatural Revamped: From Timeworn Legends to Twenty-First-Century Chic, edited by Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan, Fairleigh Dickinson UP / Rowman and Littlefield, 2016, pp. 97-114.
- "Clothes Make the Man: Closet, Cabaret, Cinema in El lugar sin límites (Arturo Ripstein, 1978)." Despite All Adversities: Spanish-American Queer Cinema, edited by Andrés Lema-Hincapié and Debra A. Castillo, State U of New York P, 2015, pp. 221-36. SUNY Series, Genders in the Global South.
- With Raúl Rodríguez-Hernández. "The Sublime Vampire: Transparency, Melodrama, and the Mise-en-Scène of Two Mexican Vampire Films." The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend, edited by Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan, Fairleigh Dickinson UP / Rowman and Littlefield, 2013, pp. 225-38.
- "Parodying Paradise: When Mexican Buddy Films Turn Rudo y Cursi." Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 30, no. 1, 2013, pp. 50-61. Taylor & Francis Online, doi:10.1080/10509208.2010.544974.
- "Revolution, Ideology, and the Eye of Cinema: El cometa as Mise en Abyme." Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, vol. 8, no. 1, Jan. 2012, pp. 37-49. Ingenta Connect, doi:10.1386/shci.8.1.37_1.
- "Who's Buried in Beatriz's Tomb? Monuments, Mementos, and Muses." The Boom Femenino in Mexico: Reading Contemporary Women's Writing, edited by Nuala Finnegan and Jane E. Lavery, Cambridge Scholars, 2010, pp. 280-94.
Honors and Activities
- Book for Understanding the World award for "Bored to Distraction," Association of American University Presses, 2003
- Book for Understanding the World award for "Danger Zones," Association of American University Presses, 1996