Laura M. Martins | LSU Foreign Languages and Literatures

Laura Martins

 Laura Martins

Professor of Spanish 

Ph.D., University of Maryland at College Park, 1996
Phone: 225-578-5173
E-mail: martins@lsu.edu
Office: 303 Hodges Hall

Area of Interest

Contemporary Latin American literature and film; Luis Buñuel’s works; cinema and human rights in Argentina, cinema and labor, cinema and visual arts, the poetry-film nexus; neoliberal culture in Latin America. 

Recent Teaching

SPAN 7990 (“Literary Theory: Literatura/Sociedad. Temas y relatos hispanoamericanos”); SPAN 4201 (“Cinema in Spanish. Escape from Hollywood”); SPAN 7946: “Archivos de la memoria. Violencia, olvido y continuidad. (Literatura y cine en el Cono Sur)”

Selected Awards & Honors

• 2022 Book:

Lo poético cinematográfico. La imagen luciérnaga de Gustavo Fontán. Raleigh, NC: A Contracorriente | University of North Carolina Press, 2022.

--This book has been awarded the Premio Humanidades—Honorable Mention by the Southern Cone Studies section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), 2023. 

• 2022 Manship Summer Publication Grant ($5,000), College of Humanities and Social Sciences. 

• 2021 Manuscript workshop funded by the Dean’s Mid-Career Manuscript Workshop Award ($600) at University of California-Irvine (UCI), June 22, 2021. 

• 2019 Research Fellowship. Louisiana State University, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (Spring semester).

• 2017 Scholarship for Teachers of Spanish as a Foreign Language [“Beca ELE”|ELE Scholarship], Salamanca, Spain, July 9—15, 2017, sponsored by the Ministry of Education|Consejería de Educación de España|Ministerio de Educación.  

• 2016 Tiger Athletic Foundation President’s Award ($2,500)

• 2015 Nicholson Award for Outstanding Faculty Member – LSU College of Humanities & Social Sciences.

• 2012 Summer Stipend Research Award. Louisiana State University, College of Humanities and Social Sciences ($5,000).

• 2011 Manship Summer Research Fellowship, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, LSU ($9,000).

• 2007 Manship Summer Research Fellowship, College of Arts and Sciences, LSU ($5,000). 

Selected Publications

Lo poético cinematográfico. La imagen luciérnaga de Gustavo Fontán. Raleigh, NC: A Contracorriente | University of North Carolina Press, 2022.

--This book has been awarded the Premio Humanidades—Honorable Mention by the Southern Cone Studies section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), 2023. 

New Readings in Latin American and Spanish Literary and Cultural Studies. Ed. L. Martins. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2014.

“Gustavo Fontán’s Films: On Faces, Specters, Fragments of Matter.” The Film Archipelago: Islands in Latin American Cinema, edited by Francisco-J. Hernández Adrián and Antonio Gómez. London: Bloomsbury–Bloomsbury, Film & Media|World Cinema (2021): 171-188. 

“Algunas consideraciones sobre lo poético cinematográfico.” Icónica. Pensamiento fílmico (September 2019). 

“Ojos abiertos, ojos entrecerrados.” Carátula. Revista Cultural Centroamericana 92 (2019). 

“César Vallejo: o el lacerado de tempranía.” Carátula. Revista Cultural Centroamericana 87 (2018). 

“Per-verse Latin American Women Poets”. The Cambridge History of Latin American Women’s Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 504-525.  

“Contra la museificación del mundo: La orilla que se abisma (2008) y La casa (2012) de Gustavo Fontán.” Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas 11 (2) (2014): 167-177.

“Desciudadanización: trabajo, identidad y políticas neoliberales en Argentina (El cine de Lisandro Alonso).” New Readings in Latin American and Spanish Literary and Cultural Studies. Ed. L. Martins. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2014, 68-80.

"En contra de contar historias. Cuerpos e imágenes hápticas en el cine argentino (Lisandro Alonso y Lucrecia Martel)". Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana. Año XXXVII, 73 (2011): 401-420.

“Cine, política y (post)estado. La libertad de Lisandro Alonso”. Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos/Nouveau Monde Mondes Nouveaux/New World New Worlds. (École des hautes études en sciences sociales) 10 (2010). http://nuevomundo.revues.org/58374?lang=en

"Memorias del cuerpo (imágenes que nos devuelven la mirada)". Cine y derechos humanos. Susana Sel (ed.) Buenos Aires: Instituto Multimedia DerHumALC, 2008, 77-91.

“Bodies at Risk: On the State of Exception. (Lucrecia Martel’s La ciénaga [The Swamp].” Argentinean Cultural Production during the Neoliberal Years (1989-2001). Carolina Rocha and Hugo Hortiguera, eds. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007, 205-15.

“Luis Buñuel, or Ways of Disturbing Spectatorship.” Luis Buñuel. New Readings. Peter Evans and Isabel Santaolalla, eds. London: British Film Institute (BFI), 2004, 187-197.

“Un cine en contra de la opresión y las microcristalizaciones fascistas y a favor de la imagen desbordada.” Buñuel, Siglo XXI. Isabel Santaolalla et al, editors. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza & Institución Fernando el Católico, 2004, 327-333.

Notable Activities

Member of the ACE Internationalization Lab Committee | Ed Abroad subcommittee (2021-)

LSU HSS Faculty Senator (2019-)

Director of Undergraduate Studies (2005-2007, Spring 2015-Fall 2016, Spring 2020-Fall 2021); Undergraduate Advisor (1998-2001)

Director of Graduate Studies (2009)

Section Head (2003-2004)

Director of LSU in Argentina (2014, 2015 and 2018)

Director of LSU in Chile (2013)

Director of LSU in Argentina (2006, 2007 and 2008)

Director of LSU in Spain (Granada) (2004-2005)

Director of LSU in Spain (Salamanca) (2002-2003)