Dr Melisa Moore
Status/discipline:
Modern languages and cultures
Contact Details:
Past project:
(Re-)Envisioned Landscapes: Environment, Technology, Nationhood in Modern Latin America: The twentieth century marked an era of unprecedented change across Latin America. The modernization of industry and agriculture, migration, urbanization, a new demographic, and the growth of the working classes, transformed the socio-economic landscape. With expanded communication networks, travel and trade opportunities, and the spread of left-wing ideology, these changes challenged the foundations of the neo-colonial state, ushering new actors onto the political stage: the popular classes and their representatives. This project explores the emergence of new economic, social and political environments, and notions of space, time, the natural world and nationhood across Latin America with the development and expansion of modern technologies—material/scientific and cultural/aesthetic (e.g. advances in industrial/agricultural production methods, transportation, urban planning, printing, photography and film). Specifically, it examines the complex relations between technology, environment, and local/national geographies and identities from twentieth-century to present-day Latin America, whilst also considering the theoretical-epistemological underpinnings of these terms/concepts from different disciplinary angles.