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Sam Amago
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Spanish, Chair of the Department of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese
Research Summary
I teach courses on modern and contemporary Spanish literary history, cinema, comics, and culture. From 2019-2022, I served as Chair of the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese at UVA. I am a former Chair of the Department of Romance Studies and Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 2003 to 2010 I taught at the University of Notre Dame, where I served as Associate Professor of Spanish. In an administrative capacity, I was a fellow in the University of Virginia's Leadership in Academic Matters Program (2021) and the Chairs Leadership Program at UNC-Chapel Hill (2018).
More information on Environmental Humanities at UVA
My current scholarship centers on waste and space, memory and modernity in post-dictatorship Spanish cultural production, including photography, documentary, narrative, comics, film and television.
Read a short entry on basura / trash / waste
Part of the collective Constellation of the Commons.
Listen to a podcast on trash, aesthetics, and Spanish film of the post-Franco era
Publications
Books
Basura: Cultures of Waste in Contemporary Spain. University of Virginia Press, 2021. Winner of the 32nd Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for an outstanding book published in English or Spanish in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and cultures.
Spanish Cinema in the Global Context: Film on Film. New York: Routledge, 2013.
True Lies: Narrative Self-Consciousness in the Contemporary Spanish Novel. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2006.
Consequential Art: Comics Culture in Contemporary Spain. Co-edited with Matthew Marr. U of Toronto Press, 2019.
Vademécum del cine Iberoamericano: Métodos y Teorías. Co-edited with Eugenia Afinoguénova and Kathryn Everly. Hispanófila 177 (2016)
Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain. Co-edited with Carlos Jerez-Farrán. U of Notre Dame Press, 2010.
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