Antonio Barrenechea (abarrene)

Academic Degrees

Antonio Barrenechea is the 2017 co-recipient of the Harrison and Marguerite Pittman Outstanding Mid-Career Faculty Award from the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication. He specializes in literatures and cinemas of the Americas, and is the author of America Unbound: Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies (University of New Mexico Press, 2016), a comparative study of colonial imaginaries in “masterworks” from the U.S., Latin America, and Francophone Canada. In relation to this book, the forthcoming “Hemispheric Studies Beyond Suspicion” was awarded the 2014-2016 prize for best essay by the International Association of Inter-American Studies. During a 2016-2017 fellowship to study cinema at the Institut Américain Universitaire in Aix-en-Provence, he lectured in Europe and was interviewed for the feature “The Hemispheric Muse” in the Italian journal América Crítica. Dr. Barrenechea is currently researching a new book with the working title: “The Groovy Gothic: Monster, Trash, and Exploitation Cinema of the Americas.” He has developed several courses at UMW, including a three-semester survey on the literatures of the Americas that ranges from pre-1492 to the present, and an honors course on exploitation cinemas from Thomas Edison to Quentin Tarantino. Dr. Barrenechea has served UMW in a leadership capacity through the James Farmer Multicultural Center, most recently by organizing a faculty panel on multidisciplinary approaches to Latino Literature for National Hispanic Heritage Month. He presently serves on the boards of the American Comparative Literature Association, the International American Studies Association, the International Association of Inter-American Studies, and Comparative American Studies: An International Journal.