Jessica Gordon-Burroughs

Lecturer in Latin American Studies and Visual Culture

  • Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies
  • Department of European Languages and Cultures
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Contact details

Address

Street
City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9LH

Availability

  • My office hours are Tuesdays 2:30-3:30. Please contact me by email to make an appointment.

Biography

Background

Jessica received her Ph.D. and B.A. from Columbia University. Her manuscript in preparation is titled Foreign Elements: Latin American cinematic experiments in dis-placement. Her research has been supported by the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University, the Elmer Adler Fund in graphic arts at Princeton University, and The Carnegie Trust. Her essays have appeared in Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Cinema Journal, Discourse, among other journals and collections. In 2020, Jessica's article "The Pixelated Afterlife of Nicolás Guillén Landrián: Migratory Forms" (JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 59, no. 2 (2020): 23-42) was awarded the Best Essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). Following on this research, Jessica contributed the chapter "Imagining Cuba’s New Revolutionary Communities through Film (1959-1989)" for the forthcoming volume, The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature.

In July 2022, Jessica participated in a roundtable in relation to her research on Guillén Landrián at Documenta fifteen, Kassel Germany, "The Corrosive Gaze of Nicolás Guillén Landrián," curated by José Luis Aparicio: https://documenta-fifteen.de/en/calendar/the-corrosive-gaze-of-nicolas-guillen-landrian/?fbclid=IwAR3tRM3Lro69eSfBFXQoNNsMLi7c7SiKDh-mZGKa30Zj6X8u0pEHy2B07V8

In May 2022, Jessica co-organized with the curators Aimé Iglesias Lukin and Sofía Reeser del Rio, the screening Collective Visions: Young Filmmakers in New York, building on her research on the Chilean filmmaker Jaime Barrios. This screening was in conjunction with the exhibit This Must be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York. 1965-1975, at Visual Culture, Americas Society (NYC), the longest standing exhibition space for Latin American and Caribbean art in the United States: https://www.as-coa.org/events/young-filmmakers-new-york-collective-visions-screening

There was a follow-up screening, "Between Superbug and Santana" at La Sala de Pepe y Foto Espacio on the Lower East Side, co-organized with the Film-Makers' Cooperative, alongside Michael Jacobsohn; Q&A conducted with Gabo Camnitzer.

Jessica is currently the lead researcher for the Project, “De-colonizing the Archive: Restoration of Guillén Landrián’s Inside Downtown and The End but not the End,” supported by the University of Edinburgh 2022 College Impact Fund in collaboration with Havana Glasgow Film Festival, Africa in Motion, and the Vulnerable Media Lab (VML) at Queen’s University, Canada.

She will be delivering the talk, "Interrupted Images: Remembering | Recordando a Nicolás Guillén Landrián" at University of Oxford in June 2023:

https://torch.ox.ac.uk/event/interrupted-images-remembering-recordando-nicolas-guillen-landrian

Responsibilities & affiliations

Administrative Roles

  • Director of Postgraduate Research (Department of European Languages and Cultures) (2021-present)
  • Spanish, Portuguese, Latin American Studies (SPLAS) Research Seminar Coordinator (2018-present)

Committee Roles

  • Spanish, Portuguese, Latin American Studies (SPLAS) representative, Department of European Languages and Cultures Research Seminar Series Committee (2019-present)

External Appointments

  • Council Member for the Visual Culture Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA)(2022-2024)
  • Prize Committee, Association for Latin American Art (ALAA) Annual Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Essay Prize (2023-2024) (Visual Culture Section of the Latin American Studies Association/College Art Association)
  • Comité Científico Internacional, XLIV Congreso Internacional del IILI: Cruces disciplinarios, Universidad Nacional y Kapodistríaca de Atenas

    Grecia, 2023

Postgraduate teaching

Jessica teaches on the MSc (Masters) in Comparative Literature and the MSc (Masters) in Intermediality.

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

Jessica's current research focuses on diaspora studies, crossing Caribbean diaspora cultures with that of the Southern Cone, post-War to the present. She welcomes inquiries from potential doctoral students who would like to pursue research on Latin American film and visual culture, especially in relation to the politics of archives, print and material culture studies.  Contact her (j.gordonburroughs@ed.ac.uk) to speak more about your project.

Current PhD students supervised

Current PhD students supervised

-Francisco Llinás Casas. Doctoral student (Sept. 2022-), supervision with Dr Iona Macintyre, Por Estas Calles de Intersección: Representing Venezuela’s Refugee Crisis (1999 to the Present) (Supported by Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities AHRC DTP Scholarship)

-Paulina Caro Troncoso. Doctoral student (Sept 2019-), supervision with Prof Patricia Allmer and Neil Cox (History of Art), Towards a Poetics of Revolution: Matta’s Works 1963-1982

-Gustavo Herrera Taboada. Doctoral student (Sept 2020-), supervision with Dr Charlotte Gleghorn, "El Perú no es Lima." Between Hispanic Neocolonialism and Ibero-American Transnationalism in Peruvian-Spanish Film Co-Productions

Research summary

Dr Gordon-Burroughs' research and teaching focuses on book and film materiality and media studies in Latin/o America.

Current research interests

Please see Jessica's articles on Afro-Cuban filmmaker Nicolás Guillén Landrián (Journal of Cinema and Media Studies) and Chilean filmmaker Jaime Barrios (Discourse) for more information on her current book project. See her work on Ediciones Vigía, and Cuban artists' books for her research on print culture especially in relation to the Caribbean (now, Puerto Rico), a project she is working on with the support of a Carnegie Research Incentive Grant. 

Knowledge exchange

At LASA 2022, Dr Gordon-Burroughs co-organized with Jesse Lerner (Pitzer College) a Visual Culture Section-sponsored screening, Between a Flower and a Bomb: Latin American Short Films (BAMPFA Collection; in-person and online), at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), part of BAMPFA’s Out of the Vault series: https://bampfa.org/event/between-flower-and-bomb-latin-american-short-films

2022 College Impact Fund for the Project, “De-colonizing the Archive: Restoration of Guillén Landrián’s Inside Downtown and The End but not the End”

2020 School of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures [LLC] Impact Fund, University of Edinburgh

Nicolás Guillén Landrián: Memory in Progress (co-organized with Dr Raquel Ribeiro), at Havana Glasgow Film Festival and Africa in Motion Film Festival, 13 November, 2020.

(See companion video with Cuban artists and critics speaking of Nicolás Guillén Landrián’s legacy)

Research activities

View all 32 activities on Research Explorer

View all 18 publications on Research Explorer

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