Burning Down the House

Burning Down the House explores the political, economic and cultural landscape of 21st-century Latin America through comics. It examines works from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Perú, Colombia, México and Spain, and the resurgence of comics in recent decades spurred by the ubiquity of the Internet and reminiscent of the complex political experiences and realities of the region.

The volume analyses experimentations in themes and formats and how Latin American comics have become deeply plural in its inspirations, subjects, drawing styles and political concerns while also underlining the hybrid and diverse cultures they represent. It examines the representative and historical images in a state of emergency and political upheaval; decolonial perspectives and social struggles linked to ethnic and sexual minorities. It looks at how Latin American comics are made right now – from a diverse and autochthonous Latin American perspective.

With a wide array of illustrations, this book in the Global Perspectives in Comics Studies series will be an important resource for scholars and researchers of comic studies, Latin American studies, cultural studies, English literature, political history and post-colonial studies.

Laura Cristina Fernández is a head professor in the Faculty of Arts and Design, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (UNCU), Argentina. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences and an MA in Latin American Art. She is actively involved in several research projects concerning comics, recent memory and crisis and has co-directed research projects on independent comics, fanzines and discourses on gender and sexual dissidence. Her most recent works as a comic artist are Ruptures. Les bébés volés du Franquisme (Ruptures. The stolen babies of Francoism, with Laure Sirieix, Bang Editions, 2022) and Turba. Memorias de Malvinas (Peat. Memories of Malvinas, Editorial Hotel de las Ideas, 2022).

Amadeo Gandolfo holds a History degree and a PhD in Social Sciences. He was granted postdoctoral scholarships by the Ibero-American Institute of Berlin in 2019 and by the Humboldt Foundation in 2020. He curated several comics exhibitions in the city of Buenos Aires. He edited Kamandi, an online magazine of comics criticism (www.revistakamandi.com) alongside Pablo Turnes. His research focuses on Ibero-American graphic humor from a transnational perspective and on authorship and collaboration conflicts in the field of American comics. He currently lives in Berlin.

Pablo Turnes is a History Professor and holds a PhD in Social Sciences. He teaches at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) and is a researcher of the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani (UBA). He currently lives in Berlin as a postdoctoral fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His research, under the direction of Dr. Stefan Rinke (LAI-Freie Universität Berlin), focuses on the topic of contemporary Latin American comics and their relationship to memory, trauma and recent Latin American history.