Bridget Franco

Profile Image Name

Spanish Department
Cluster Director, Global Society, Montserrat Program

Associate Professor, Spanish
Ph.D., University of California - Irvine
 

Fields: Contemporary Latin American Literature, 20th/21st century Southern Cone Literature and Film, Philosophy and Politics in Literature

 

Contact Information

Email: bfranco@holycross.edu
Office Phone: 508-793-2291
Office: Stein 412
Box: 211A

About me

I grew up in a small coastal town in Rhode Island, blissfully unaware of the limits of my monolingualism until my senior year of high school when I left the United States to study abroad in another small town called Yecla, in the southeastern province of Murcia, Spain. The experience was the most pivotal ten months of my life... first came the intense homesickness, cultural shock, loneliness, and linguistic roadblocks; then slowly, through the daily grind of listening and trying to communicate in Spanish, spending time with my patient host family, and leaning into my curiosity and confusion, I found myself with an entirely new perspective about cultural differences and a deeper appreciation for the common ground we share. In the years since my transformative experience in Yecla, I returned to Spain to study in Toledo, and I have spent time in different parts of Latin America (México, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, and Perú). 

Before arriving at Holy Cross, I worked in the study abroad office and special collections department at the University of Notre Dame, I applied to a doctoral program in Philosophy in Colorado, I taught Spanish at a small private college in Southern California, I tutored high school students, and I earned my Ph.D. in the Spanish & Portuguese Department of the University of California, Irvine. Inspired by the central image in Jorge Luis Borges' famous short story "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan", I like to imagine that while my career has had many forking paths, it has always been inextricably linked to my love of Latin American literature and guided by my passion for better understanding the complex realities of the Spanish-speaking world.

My research and teaching interests are focused on three intersecting and interdisciplinary areas: Latin American Film Studies, Southern Cone Memory Studies, and experiential pedagogy in the Spanish-language curriculum. As a publicly engaged scholar, I am committed to the collaborative creation and democratic distribution of resources through open-access Digital Humanities initiatives. As a teacher, I strive to foment my students' engagement with the Spanish-speaking world through film, literature, visual arts, history, politics and collaborations with our local Latinx communities. And while the forking paths are endless, I am excited to see where your journey takes you! 

Courses

  • SPAN 201 & 202 - Intermediate Spanish 1 & 2
  • SPAN 301 - Spanish Composition & Conversation
  • SPAN 304 - Aspects of Spanish-American Culture
  • SPAN 305 - Introduction to Textual Analysis
  • SPAN 308 - Readings in Latin American Literature
  • SPAN 312 - Filmmaking in Spanish
  • SPAN 405 - Modern Spanish-American Narrative
  • SPAN 420 - Latin American Film
  • MONT 106G; 107G - Latin America through Cinema; Diverse Art in Latin America

Recent Work

Franco, Bridget and Manuel Medina. Introduction, “Screening the Indigenous Experience in Contemporary Latin American Cinema.” Out from the Shadows: The Indigenous Presence in Twenty-First-Century Latin American Film, edited by Bridget Franco and Manuel Medina, special issue of Diálogo, vol. 23, no. 1, Spring 2020, pp. 3-6.

“‘My Camera Is Not a Weapon’: Indigenous Erasure in Lucía Puenzo’s Wakolda.” Out from the Shadows: The Indigenous Presence in Twenty-First-Century Latin American Film, special issue of Diálogo, vol. 23, no. 1, Spring 2020, pp. 113-125.   

“Using Community-Based Learning to Teach Poetry in the Spanish Language Classroom.” Teaching Modern Latin American Poetries, edited by Jill S. Kuhnheim and Melanie Nicholson, Modern Language Association of America, 2019, pp. 235-251.

The Prado Museum Expansion: The Diverse Art of Latin America. Reacting to the Past, Level 3 game in development, February 2019, http://reactingconsortiumlibrary.org/prado.

Review of A Companion to Latin American Cinema, edited by Maria M. Delgado, Stephen Hart, and Randal Johnson. Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas vol. 15, no. 2, June 2018, pp. 267-270. 

“Floating Statues and Streams of Consciousness: Memory Work in Argentina's Río de la Plata and Río Salí.” The Image of the River in Latin/o American Literature, edited by Elizabeth Rivero and Jeanie Murphy, Lexington Books, 2017.

“La política de la locura en las novelas de Ricardo Piglia.” Chasqui: Revista de literatura latinoamericana, vol. 46, no. 1, May 2017, pp. 84-101.

“Cineglos.” Vademécum del cine iberoamericano: Métodos y teorías, edited by Eugenia Afinoguénova, Samuel Amago and Kathryn Everly, special issue of Hispanófila, vol. 177, Spring 2016, pp. 277-282.

“Cinematographic and Political Transitions in La redada and La frontera.” Special issue on Film and Film Studies, Hispania, vol. 98, no. 3, September 2015, pp. 406-420.

“Crossing Pedagogical Boundaries: United States-Mexico Border Simulation Game.” The Border in the Classroom: Approaches to Border Studies, edited by Benita Heiskanin and Andrae M. Marak, special issue of The Middle Ground Journal: World History and Global Studies no. 8, Spring 2014. 

“United or Divided States? U.S.-Mexico Border Simulation.” The Hallway, Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Washington, January 2014, hallway.org/node/768.

“Una 'redada' literaria y cinematográfica a la memoria tucumana.” Revista Iberoamericana, vol. 78, no. 241, October-December 2012, pp. 983-1000.

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