SLU Professor Awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship Grant
Maggie Rotermund
Senior Media Relations Specialist
maggie.rotermund@slu.edu
314-977-8018
Reserved for members of the media.
02/07/2022
ST. LOUIS 鈥 Amy E. Wright, Ph.D., associate professor of Hispanic Studies at Saint Louis University, has been awarded an individual fellowship through the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for her upcoming book, Serial Storytelling in Mexico, From Nationhood to Now (1821-2021).
The book is slated to be published in 2023.
The highly competitive NEH fellowship recognizes exceptional humanities projects on the national level, annually awarded through the United States government. The fellowships support advanced research in the humanities, with recipients producing award-winning books, digital materials or other scholarly resources.
Wright鈥檚 project draws on a range of archives, historical records, and popular culture to show the resilience and breadth of serial storytelling in Mexico, from founding to present. She said she has been working on serialized narrative for several years.
鈥淢any countries have serialized storytelling, or characters that reappear in different forms,鈥 Wright said. 鈥淢exico has a particularly strong tradition, beginning with characters that come from the oral traditions and take on a life outside of their original story.鈥
Wright鈥檚 project highlights Mexico鈥檚 enduring prominence in serial productions 鈥 exploring the long-running intrigues of serial novels, comics, radio dramas, and telenovelas, as well as blogs and podcasts 鈥 while advancing new approaches to the study of Mexican culture and history.
鈥淭hese characters have their origins in the 19th century or before and as we trace them through their evolution we also get a snapshot of the predominant media form of the time,鈥 Wright said. 鈥淔rom oral traditions to the strong telenovelas of the late 20th century, we can see how the Mexican people are telling their stories.鈥
The characters most often serialized have similar arcs 鈥 many tend to be rogues with a habit for mocking authority. Some had Robin Hood tendencies, taking from those in power to redistribute to the general population, exposing hypocrisy in the process.
鈥淪ome began in popular lore in native languages making fun of the Spanish colonizer,鈥 Wright said. 鈥淭he characters are historical bandits.鈥
Wright spent a sabbatical in Mexico City digging through radio and telenovela archives.
鈥淔rom the beginning, there is this mix of fiction with reality,鈥 she said. 鈥淭he innovations that went into telling these stories, from the radio sound effects, to the beginnings of television, you can trace those innovations in the storytelling.鈥
As the storytelling forms have evolved, so have the stories. Wright notes that with the proliferation of media outlets and options the idea of a national narrative has decreased.
鈥淭he way we live now, no one experiences the story the same way as they did when we all listened to the same radio programs or tuned into the same telenovelas.鈥
Each year the NEH receives an average of 1,100 applications for individual projects and has a 7% funding ratio, awarding only some 70 individual fellowships out of the applications received.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at www.neh.gov.