Antonio Barrenechea (abarrene)

Academic Degrees

Antonio Barrenechea is a professor of Literature of the Americas and Cinema. His first book America Unbound: Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies (University of New Mexico Press, 2016) merges comparative and hemispheric literature disciplines by reinterpreting Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick as a gateway to maximalist novels from the US Southwest, Mexico City, and Quebec. His second book, Studies in Groovy Gothic Cinema: Horror,Trash, and the Hemispheric Sixties (Bloomsbury, 2026) explores the relation between monster movies and the "long" counterculture within six filmmaking capitals: Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Montreal, Toronto, and Hollywood.

“Hemispheric Studies Beyond Suspicion” won the 2014-2016 prize for best essay from the International Association of Inter-American Studies. It forms the basis for his current book project: “One Hemisphere, Many Nations: A Historiography of Literature of the Americas.” The manuscript traces neglected Hispanist scholarship from the Good Neighbor era, through the postwar rise of American Studies, and into the “hemispheric turn” of the 2000s. In support of this project, the Bancroft Library awarded him a 2022-23 Reese Fellowship to access its Herbert E. Bolton papers. An M.C. Lang Fellowship from Rare Book School at the University of Virginia followed in 2023-2024. A 2026 Dorothy Foehr Huck Research Award from Penn State University will support access to the Luis Alberto Sánchez papers. The finished project would be the first such disciplinary history.

Dr. Barrenechea is on the advisory boards of Comparative American Studies (CAS) and Review of International American Studies (RIAS). He has served on the boards of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) and the International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS). At Mary Washington, he has designed a survey of Literature of the Americas consisting of the tripartite sequence: “New World Writing in the Colonial Period” (English 328), “Literature and Nation-Building in the Americas" (English 329), and “Hemispheric Fiction of the Global Age” (English 330).