Militarized Masculinity in Spain and Chile: A Video Project
Still from “Imágenes de una dictadura” by Patricio Henríquez (2004).
Audio-visual digital scholarship is an emerging form that offers exciting new avenues for academics to disseminate their work online, present at conferences, and engage with students in the classroom.
Three years ago, when I was on sabbatical in Barcelona, I was introduced to the genre through the feminist film scholar Barbara Zecchi, Professor of Film Studies and Spanish at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. At that time, I was beginning my second book manuscript titled Militarized Masculinity in Spain and Chile. I learned that Zecchi had participated in the innovative Summer Workshop on Videographic Criticism at Middlebury College spearheaded by Jason Mittell, Christian Keathley, and Catherine Grant.
Since then, I have learned from these trailblazers in the field, as well as the film scholar and documentarian Ted White at Keene State College. Using Adobe Premiere Pro and collaborating with bright film students, I created my first videographic essay in 2021 to convey the main ideas of my book. The work sheds light on the links between masculinity, militarism, and violence to better understand the causes and consequences of dictatorial brutality.
Through the audiovisual format, I focus on Francisco Franco’s and Augusto Pinochet’s right-wing military regimes and their similarities regarding the use of torture as a method of social control. The central claim is twofold: first, that militarized masculinity played a role in shaping acts of political repression and violence, and second, that literature and film can render visible these overlooked relationships. After finishing this comparative treatment of militarized masculinity, I produced five other video-essays that may be viewed on Vimeo. Perhaps what I enjoy most about the creative process is combining the audio with the visual since what we see is shaped by what we hear.
Militarized Masculinity Final.mp4 from Lisa DiGiovanni on Vimeo.
Lisa DiGiovanni is associate professor of Spanish Peninsular and Latin American studies with a joint appointment in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures and the Department of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College.
