Esther Gabara

Motifs in Non-Literary Fiction: Walking in Spirals Under Neoliberalism · 2022 - April 22, 2022 Keynote/Named Lecture Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, University of Texas, Austin

Interview with Tatiana Parcero · 2017 Interview Getty Foundation, LA, LA

Photography, Avant-Garde, and Modernity - The Atlantic World Research Network (AWRN) · April 5, 2016 Invited Talk Weatherspoon Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. ,

El laberinto de la hermandad: Me-Xicano Photography and Protest · November 8, 2015 - November 7, 2015 Invited Talk UCLA, Chicano Studies Resource Center/Autry Museum of Art,

The Gesture of Fiction: Invention and Intervention in Contemporary Art of the Americas · November 5, 2015 Invited Talk Institute of Fine Arts, New York University,

“No-object, No-narrative, No-America: Negation in Art and Theory since Neoliberalism.” - Art History and ILAS · November 21, 2014 Lecture Columbia University,

Panel leader at colloquium in honor of Mary Louise Pratt · November 15, 2014 Other New York University, New York University

Getty Institute Symposium for Pacific Standard Time 2: Los Angeles/ Latin America (LA/LA), supported by the Getty Foundation - Discussant La Raza, Autry National Center/ Chicano Studies Research Center · October 4, 2014 - October 5, 2014 Other UCLA,

“No-object, No-narrative, No-America: Negation in Art and Theory since Neoliberalism.” · May 8, 2014 Lecture Romance Languages, University of Chicago,

Errant Continent: Theories of Photography, Avant-Garde, and Modernity in Latin/America · September 12, 2013 Lecture University of Toronto

La vanguardia y los usos de la fotografía · May 23, 2013 Lecture Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM/Museo Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City, Mexico

A Museological Bermuda Triangle: Coloniality in Contemporary Spanish Exhibition Practices · May 6, 2013 Lecture Department of Visual Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

¿Nostalgia radical? Ficciones estéticas y políticas en la fotografía · November 19, 2012 Lecture Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad de San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina

The Fiction of Emancipation · November 8, 2012 Lecture Hemispheric Convergence, Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, held at Duke University

El triángulo museológico de las Bermudas: El Prado, el Museo de América y el Museo Nacional de Antropología · April 20, 2012 Lecture La Historia Sin Pasado: Contraimágenes De La Colonialidad España/América Latina. Centro 2 de mayo, Madrid, Spain

Pobre México. So Far from Modernist Originality, So Close to the United States · November 18, 2011 Lecture Princeton University

Nostalgic Critique: Contemporary Photography as Non-literary Fiction · December 3, 2010 Lecture The Itinerant Languages of Photography. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

Modernist Tourists in Mexico. · October 14, 2010 Lecture Paul Strand in Mexico. Aperture Foundation, New York, New York

Gesture: Signs of the Body in Visual Studies · May 28, 2010 Lecture The 2010 Visual Culture Studies Conference. Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom

Gesture: Signs of the Body · May 3, 2010 Lecture Research Seminar series, History of Art Department, University of York, York, United Kingdom

On Terra em transe · December 5, 2009 Lecture “‘Stronger are the powers of the people’: politics, poetics and popular education in Brazilian cinema, 1962-1979.” No-w-here, London, United Kingdom

“Drawn: The New Art of Making Fiction” · December 2, 2009 Lecture Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Manchester. Manchester, United Kingdom.

Queer Surrealism: As peripheral surrealism · July 23, 2009 Lecture Surrealism and Non-Normative Sexualities. Seminar at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Cambridge, MA.

The “Quasi-Corpus, Habeas Corpus, and Relative Democracy: The Cutting Intimacy of Non-Literary Fiction · April 13, 2009 Lecture Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York.

Misplaced Influence: Art Histories of and from Continental America · February 14, 2009 Lecture Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England

“Errant Landscapes: Mário de Andrade Surveys Brazil” · April 14, 2008 Lecture University of California, Berkeley

“Fighting It Out: Being Naco in the Global Lucha Libre.” · February 15, 2008 Lecture Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Los Angeles

Discussant/Chair: Visual Politics: Contemporary Art and Visual Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean · February 9, 2008 Lecture Annual Conference of the Duke-UNC Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Outreach & Engaged Scholarship

Interview - High Theory · November 9, 2024 Research New Books Network , online High Theory is a produced and edited by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu, two tired academics trying to save critique from itself, along with two amazing collaborators, Júlia Irion Martins and Nathan Kim. In this podcast, we get high on the substance of theory, and we try to explain difficult ideas from the academy with irreverence. In this episode of High Theory, Esther Gabara talks with us about Non-Literary Fiction, that is, works of fiction that belong to the world of contemporary art, rather than the world of contemporary literature. She focuses on literary and narrative strategies used by Latin American and Indigenous American artists to make “non-objective” forms of visual art under the pressures of neoliberalism. To learn more, check out her book, Non-Literary Fiction: Art of the Americas under Neoliberalism (Chicago University Press, 2022). In our conversation, Esther gave us a theoretical bibliography of thinkers from Latin America who have shaped her work on non-literary fiction. Prominent among these figures are Ferreira Gullar in Brazil and Juan Acha in Mexico, who were the founding thinkers of the term “Non-Objectualism”-- a term that informs the fiction making practices Esther studies. We found this cool piece on Juan Acha that might be worth reading. She also named the philosopher Rodolfo Kusch and his work with indigenous storytellers. Kusch’s book on Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América was translated into English and published by Duke in 2010. And finally she named the indigenous artist and activist Manuel Quintín Lame, who collaborated with the Columbia artist Antonio Caro. Each of these figures features in her book as a theorist in their own right, in a context where art is a critical practice.

Service to the Profession

Editorial Board Member : Editorial Board, ELN · 2011 Editorial Activities

Editorial Board of Modernism/Modernity · 2010 Editorial Activities

Peer review of article for Hispanic Review · November 20, 2008 Editorial Activities

Search Committee, France Professor of Pre-Columbian Art · 2008 Committee Service Department of Art, Art History, & Visual Studies

advisory member of two ongoing searches : Latino/a Studies Search Review Committee · 2008 Committee Service