Isidora Cortés-Monroy Gazitúa
Isidora Cortes-Monroy is a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto’s department of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and a research fellow at the Institute of Environment, Conservation and Sustainability. Her research investigates 20th and 21st century representations of mining sites in Chilean and Bolivian film and literature. Her academic work has been published in Environmental Communications and Critical Humanities. In addition, she has published and won awards for her short stories that explore gender violence within Latin American contexts. Her works have been published by The Bristol Short Story Prize, Jane Austen Literacy Foundation, and Leno and Bandini publishers.
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Environmental Humanities; Indigenous Studies; Literary Studies; Film Studies; Narratology; Creative Writing Creative Writing
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My thesis examines some of the ways extractivism and its correlative ideologies have been represented in northern Chilean and Bolivian literature and film during the early 20th and 21st century. It compares works produced during two periods of large-scale extraction in both zones, identifying how ideas of modernity and progress inform and are informed by the racialized and classed social relations that form at the zone of extraction. By examining the literary and cinematic representations, I analyse how writers and filmmakers can enforce or challenge the beliefs surrounding extractivism using their chosen medium. I situate my work in today’s lithium boom occurring in the region, reading these historical narratives as precursors of contemporary “green” extractivism. As a scholar and creative writer, I believe this turn to past narratives – both distant and recent – is crucial to informing the ways we resist this new cycle of extraction.