Bio

Andrew C. Rajca (Ph.D Arizona, 2010) specializes in Latin American Cultural Studies and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Portuguese, Spanish, and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina. Drawing from an interdisciplinary theoretical framework of cultural studies and critical theory, his research focuses on such themes as memory, violence, human rights, aesthetics, and space in contemporary visual and literary cultures in Latin America. His book, Dissensual Subjects: Memory, Human Rights, and Postdictatorship in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay (Northwestern University Press, 2018), critically examines the relationship between memory and human rights in postdictatorial culture through the analysis of visual art installations in former detention and torture centers. He is working on a new book focused on cinematic aesthetics and urban space in São Paulo, Brazil, and has begun initial research on a third book project focused on aesthetics and ecology in the Latin American Southern Cone.

Selected Publications

BOOKS

Rajca, Andrew C. Dissensual Subjects: Memory, Human Rights, and Postdictatorship in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.
Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 2018.

ARTICLES

Rajca, Andrew C. “Cinematic Black Territories in São Paulo: Viviane Ferreira’s O dia de Jerusa
(2014) and Um dia com Jerusa (2020). Journal of Lusophone Studies 9.1: (2024). 1-22.

Rajca, Andrew C. “Cinematic Aesthetics and the Subjects of Human Rights: on Eliane Caffé’s Era o hotel Cambridge. In: Danielle Celermajer and Alex Lefebvre, eds. The Subject of Human Rights. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2020.

 Rajca, Andrew C. “The (Re)turn to Aesthetics in Brazilian Cultural Studies.” Introduction to Special Issue on Brazilian Cultural Studies. Romance Quarterly 67.1 (2020): 1-7.

Rajca, Andrew C. “Urban Imaginaries, Spatial Practices, and Cinematic Aesthetics in Sérgio Bianchi's Os inquilinos.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies. 22 (2018): 181 - 198. 

Rajca, Andrew C. “Haptic Film Spaces and the Rhythms of Everyday Life in São Paulo in Lina Chamie’s A via láctea.” Journal of Urban Cultural Studies 4:1-2 (2017): 87-106. 

Rajca, Andrew C. "Stains of the Past: Space, Memory, and Postdictatorship in Luis Fernando Veríssimo's 'A mancha'." Bulletin of Latin American Research. June 2016. 

Rajca, Andrew C. "Alogical Memory: Thinking Beyond the (Counter)hegemonic Discursive Logic of Postdictatorial Memory in Beatriz Bracher’s Não falei." Hispanic Review. 82.1 (2014): 89-111. 

Rajca, Andrew C. "Unraveling Normalized Rhetoric of Violence and Human Rights: The Dissensual Intervention of Sérgio Bianchi’s Quanto vale ou é por quilo?" Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. 22.3 (2013): 305-321.

Rajca, Andrew C. "Remnants of the Disappeared: Subjectivity and the Politics of Postdictatorial Cultural Memory in Sergio Chejfec’s Los planetas." Dissidences Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism. Vol. 5 Issue 9. 2013.