About
Parables and Parabolas of the Spanish Civil War
Background
The period following the arrival of the former Republican supporters is often characterized by a kind of simultaneous living in a nostalgic past and an unfamiliar present. The Spanish exiles’ identities are not exclusively pegged to one side of the ocean or the other, and thus require an analytical focus beyond a single space or point in time. Because of the complex nature of the Spanish exiles’ condition- a residency marked by the uncertainty of their intended length of stay in Mexico, their nostalgia for their homeland, and their frequent gazes toward Spain, the traditional binary before and after categorizations of exile theory are largely inadequate for analyzing Spanish exile artistic creations.
Using digital tools, this project visualizes the parabolic creations of Spanish Civil War exiles living in Mexico. Text analytics, digital mapping tools, and photograph annotation programs make it possible to visualize and interact with stories, images, and spaces that centrally figure into the bifurcated subjectivity of the exiled population.
Creator
Melanie Forehand
Melanie Forehand holds a PhD in Spanish at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She received a B.A. in Hispanic Studies from the College of William and Mary (2004), a Juris Doctorate from the College of William and Mary School of Law (2007), and an M.A. in Spanish literature from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (2014).
Her dissertation research centers on parabolic representations of exile among the Spanish Civil War exiles living in Mexico. Using examples from architecture, art, autobiography, and periodicals, her work suggests that Spanish exiles living came to rely on parabolic structures to construct a community and common identity in Mexico.
In addition to her studies, Melanie is also the Program Assistant for the Center for Second Language Studies at Vanderbilt. She is currently a Mellon fellow for Digital Humanities and has also served as a HASTAC scholar, an instructor for elementary and intermediate Spanish, and is a co-founder of the online digital teaching repository Language Panda.
In her free time, Melanie enjoys making linoleum prints and doing screen printing. She created the ship artwork featured in the headers of this site and the black-and-white exile image used on this site's home page.
Support
Mellon Fellowship for the Digital Humanities
Acknowledgements
A special thank you to Sarah Swanz, librarian for digital media and publishing at Vanderbilt University, for her assistance with the creation of this project.
Thank you to the members of my dissertation committee, Michelle Murray, Edward Friedman, Andrés Zamora, and Francie Cate-Arries, for their support.
I would also like to thank the Ateneo Español de México for allowing me to access their library and archives for this project.
In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to my printmaking instructors Maureen O'Brien and Gail Looper.