General Topics Issue No. 2

Cover Image: Kati Horna, S.NOB #1 cover, 1962, ink on paper. Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Mexico City, Mexico

Published: 2021-04-19

The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 11 No. 2 (2020) - Table of Contents                  

"Agustín Cárdenas: Sculpting the 'Memory of the Future' by Susan L. Power, p. 98-119. 

"Bataillean Surrealism in Mexico: S.NOB Magazine (1962)" by David A.J. Murrieta Flores, p. 120-151.

"Mexican Carnival: Profanations in Luis Buñuel's Films Nazarín and Simón del desierto" by Lars Nowak, p. 152-177.

"Giorgio de Chirico, the First Surrealist in Mexico?" by Carlos Segoviano, p. 178-197?

"Exhibition Review: 'I Paint My Reality: Surrealism in Latin America' by Danielle M. Johnson, p. 198-204. 

This article adds to previous interpretations of Luis Buñuel’s ambiguous attitude towards Christianity by means of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of profanation as developed in his theory of carnivalism. Earlier approaches to Buñuel have either paid too little attention to the question of how his Mexican films, the largest share of his work, were influenced by the cultural context of their production, or they have explicitly denied such an influence. In contrast, this essay tries to demonstrate, on the basis of Nazarín (1959) and Simón del desierto (1965), that Buñuel’s textual strategies of profanation were informed by his experiences as an emigrant in the United States and Mexico, and by ideas concerning the Mexican amalgamation of Spanish Catholicism and indigenous religious beliefs. The title characters of both films, a Catholic priest and an ancient stylite, have chosen lifestyles that are meant to bring them closer to God, but alienate them from their fellow men and their own physical existence. Yet, both movies restore their protagonists’ ordinary humanness and connection to material reality with the help of various carnivalesque profanations that find expression in spatial movements within the vertical as well as the horizontal dimension. The horizontal movements comprise the micro- and the macro-geographical level and link the old world with the new world, which includes both the Mexican countryside and New York City. The essay uses these observations to compare Buñuel with other European Surrealists in Mexican exile, who shared his ambivalence towards religion, but sometimes lacked the high degree of critical differentiation with which he looked at Mexican culture.

The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 4 No. 1 (2010) - Table of Contents

“Out of Field (Fuera de campo): Marcel Duchamp in Buenos Aires” by Graciela Speranza, p. 1-14. 

“Légitime défense: From Communism and Surrealism to Caribbean Self-Definition” by Lori Cole, p. 15-30. 

“Remedios Varo's Mexican Drawings” by Rosa Berland, p. 30-42.

“Bee Dreaming: the Surreal Odysseys Behind Alan Glass’ Wunderkabinetts” by Gloria Orenstein, p. 43-59.

“Review of Patricia Allmer, ‘René Magritte: Beyond Painting’ by Terri Geis, p. 60-63.

“Review of Eric Ratcliffe, ‘Ithell Colquhoun: Pioneer Surrealist, Artist, Occultist, Writer and Poet’” by Elisabeth Sherman, p. 64-68. 

“‘Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective’: Issues of Identity and Camouflage” by Samantha Kavky, p. 69-72.

“Review of Catherine Millet, ‘Dalí and Me’” by Jonathan S. Wallis, p. 73-77.

“Maria Martins: the Open Secret of Étant donnés. Review of ‘Marcel Duchamp. Étant donnés’” by Frédérique Joseph-Lowery, p. 78-85. 

Does school participatory budgeting (SPB) increase students’ political efficacy? SPB, which is implemented in thousands of schools around the world, is a democratic process of deliberation and decision-making in which students determine how to spend a portion of the school’s budget. We examined the impact of SPB on political efficacy in one middle school in Arizona. Our participants’ (n = 28) responses on survey items designed to measure self-perceived growth in political efficacy indicated a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 1.46), suggesting that SPB is an effective approach to civic pedagogy, with promising prospects for developing students’ political efficacy.

The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 1 No. 1 (2007) - Table of Contents

"Introduction to the Journal" by Samantha Kavky, Claudia Mesch, and Amy H. Winter, p. i-iii.

"Anti-Surrealist Cross-Word Puzzles: Breton, Dalí and Print in Wartime America" by Julia Pine, p. 1-29.

"William Carlos Williams’ A Novelette: an American Counterproposal to French Surrealism" by Céline Mansanti, p. 30-43

"The Vernacular as Vanguard: Alfred Barr, Salvador Dalí, and the U.S. Reception of Surrealism in the 1930s" by Sandra Zalman, p. 44-67

"Ben Cobb, Anarchy and Alchemy: The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky" by David Church, p. 68-71

"Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted" by Marta Julia Clapp, p. 72-76

"Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and 'Poetic Politics'" by Terri J. Gordon, p. 77-80

"Dali and the Specter of Cinema" by Frédérique Camille Joseph-Lowery, p. 81-84

"Julia Kelly's Art, Ethnography and the Life of Objects: Paris, c. 1925-1935" by Susan Power, p. 85-90

"The Janus-faced Legacy of Joseph Beuys" by Tatjana Myoko von Prittwitz, p. 91-93

"A.J. Meek, Clarence John Laughlin: Prophet Without Honor" by Jeffrey Ian Ross, p. 94-98