Papers by silvia grassi
Altre Modernità, 2012
This famous quote by Bertolt Brecht is an interesting starting point for this article. First of a... more This famous quote by Bertolt Brecht is an interesting starting point for this article. First of all, because it demonstrates that somehow not even the author of The Antigone of Sophocles was immune to the male-dominated imaginary that permeates left-wing resistance movements. Second, because La Mari, the miniseries which is the object of my analysis, is mainly about struggle. It tells the story of María, a woman who, after the
41 | 110 | 2018, 2018
This article explores connections between construction of gender roles, family models and communi... more This article explores connections between construction of gender roles, family models and community-building processes in soap opera narratives. The underlying research hypothesis maintains that construction of gender roles and family models in soap operas influences values around which a sense of community is constructed. Using textual analysis as methodology and an intercultural approach, this study compares and contrasts British and American soap operas. This approach allows to set out two contrasting models and investigate whether and to what extent Catalan soap operas adhere to one of them by proposing an original analysis of selected characters and storylines from a corpus of Catalan drama serials. This article also queries in which ways Catalonia’s situation as a stateless nation influences a sense of community construction in Catalan soap operas.
The genre of soap operas draws from the different aesthetic values of light entertainment, melodr... more The genre of soap operas draws from the different aesthetic values of light entertainment, melodrama and realism to offer a range of experiences and pleasure to their viewers. In this article I argue that diverse weight of these three aesthetics mark national differences within the genre. I compare and contrast three traditions of the genre of soap operas: American, British and Catalan serials. While the aesthetic of melodrama is shared by all these traditions, it is the different importance given by the values of light entertainment and realism which separate the American tradition of soap operas from their British and Catalan counterparts. However, I argue that the strategies British and Catalan serials put in place to construct realist conventions differ. Employing textual analysis, I explore such strategies while comparing and contrasting them. In particular, I explore the contradictions that can be found between Catalan serials’ attachment to an epistemology of realism and their aim of sustaining a distinctive national Catalan imaginary.
Following a definition of the television medium as an Ideological State Apparatus, this chapter i... more Following a definition of the television medium as an Ideological State Apparatus, this chapter included in the book Linguaggi del metareale nella cultura catalana explores how television narratives construct ideological meanings around the concepts of past and history. In particular, I focus my analysis on how a Catalan series, La memòria dels Cargols, employs strategies of humor and parody to contest both the hegemonic discourses around the past supported by Spanish political and cultural institutions and the official discourses around history constructed by Catalan political and cultural institutions.
Altre Modernità is an academic journal on cultural studies published by Università degli Studi di... more Altre Modernità is an academic journal on cultural studies published by Università degli Studi di Milano. My article analyses La Mari, a bilingual (Catalan-Spanish) miniseries broadcast on TV3, the main channel of the Catalan public service television, in July 2003 (the first two episodes) and April 2010 (the final two episodes). I examine the journey taken by the protagonist, an Andalusian woman who moves to Barcelona in the 1960s, and her struggles for emancipation, as a citizen and as a woman. In particular, I employ Emma Scaramuzza’s theory of the ‘symbolic mothers’, as well as Luisa Muraro’s, Marta Bertran Tarrés’s and María Milagros Rivera Garretas’s theories, in order to investigate the network of friendship, solidarity, and resistance that Mari constructs with other women along her journey.
Reseach projects by silvia grassi
The aim of the research group is to examine factors that contribute to the construction of identi... more The aim of the research group is to examine factors that contribute to the construction of identity and its representation in literary and audiovisual narratives as well as the impact of identity-construction in translation and self-translation by bilingual authors.
Globalization and late modernity gave rise to the postnational, but national social formations an... more Globalization and late modernity gave rise to the postnational, but national social formations and nationalisms persist. They tend to reappear in new forms, or continue their existence under the guise of cosmopolitanism, or become constructed as patriotism in certain discourses.
Conference Presentations by silvia grassi
Fractured Identities: Resisting Hispanic Visual Cultures conference, Cardiff University, July 2009.
Voice of the Humanities postgraduate conference, Cardiff University, March 2010.
History, Memories and Fictions of Europe Research in Progress Seminar, Cardiff University, Octobe... more History, Memories and Fictions of Europe Research in Progress Seminar, Cardiff University, October 2010.
Visions and Visionaries seminar series, Cardiff University, October 2010.
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Papers by silvia grassi
Reseach projects by silvia grassi
Conference Presentations by silvia grassi
In my first chapter, which focuses on the construction of gender roles in Catalan soap operas, I apply the analytical paradigms that Anglo-Saxon feminist scholars have elaborated for the content of soap operas and the viewing practices of their audiences to a corpus of material which has rarely been analysed through this perspective. In the second chapter, which focuses on the construction of sexual dissidence in Spanish and Catalan television series, I aim to challenge ‘essentialist’ paradigms which have so far dominated the examination of the construction of sexual dissidence in television series. Moreover, I query the pedagogical aspirations of public-funded television and the contradictions often involved in the application of this remit.
My theoretical base encompasses the work of scholars as diverse as Christine Geraghty and Alberto Mira. Studies by Ricardo Llamas, Charlotte Brundson, and Dorothy Hobson, in particular, help me to articulate my comparative analysis of television content in Spanish and Catalan contexts. In conclusion, the aim of my thesis is to address the role performed by television in the construction of meanings which surround gender issues and sexual dissidence. This is a timely exercise because gender studies and studies of sexual dissidence are fairly recent fields in Spanish and Catalan academia and television has been largely disregarded, especially as far as the analysis of characters and storylines is concerned. My thesis aims to be a contribution to these fields in the Spanish and Catalan contexts.