
Dr Andrea Aramburú Villavisencio
Postdoctoral Fellow, January - September 2024
Andrea Aramburú Villavisencio (Lima, 1989) holds a PhD in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge, a MA in Contemporary Literature, Culture and Theory from King’s College London and a BA in Hispanic Literature from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Her research explores Latin American visual culture, including comics, photography and artists books through queer theory and decolonial feminisms.
Project title: Latin American Comics and Decolonial Genealogies of Resistance
The postdoctoral project proposes a methodology for reading Peruvian contemporary comics and zines (post 1970) within a feminist genealogy of four mythical figures as they are represented within pre-Hispanic imaginaries and colonial imago-textual documents. The project will have two main sections. The first section will use analytical and close-reading methods to examine contemporary comics and zines that gesture towards Peruvian imago-textual culture from the pre-Hispanic and colonial periods. The specific focus will be to examine how the mythical narratives constructed in these imago-textual documents around four feminine figures, the Coya [queen in Quechua; the Inca’s ruling partner], the tejedora pre-Hispánica [pre-Hispanic seamstress] , the bruja/hechicera [witch] and the santa/beata [saint/blessed woman], have been re-appropriated or contested in contemporary comics and zine culture. The second section will be practice-based and will consist of a series of zine-making workshops inspired by these mythical imago-textual figures.
One of my main aims is to understand by what formal means Peruvian comics and zines present particular affordances that may allow us to place them within a decolonial genealogy of the form. Another important aim is to shift the masculine-oriented gaze dominating indigenous and colonial forms of imago-textual culture and re-engaging with their representations in the context of present feminist struggles (particularly reproductive rights and rights to territory).