Monday, February 13, 2012

Author Spotlight, David William Foster


By: Sarah Mason, Sales Intern

David William Foster, Regents' Professor of Spanish and Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University and author of Contemporary Argentine Cinema and Violence in Argentine Literature, is our latest author spotlight!

Which of your books/essays did you enjoy researching for the most? Why?

Contemporary Argentine Cinema, because of the sociopolitical issues associated with the return to constitutional democracy in Argentina in 1983 represented by the films.

What inspired you to consider studying Latin America/Spanish?

Some of the best things in life happen by chance. I was fortunate enough to part of one of the first junior high school Spanish programs in the country (Seattle) and then fell in with a group of Latin American studies at the University of Washington, finally ending up, at the age of 26, as a Fulbright professor in Argentina. The rest, as they say, is history.

What is your favorite Latin American city you’ve visited? Why?

Buenos Aires: I have spent almost 50 years researching and teaching in that city, one of the great cultural capitals of Latin America and a very easy city to negotiate.

What is your favorite Argentine film, and why?

Historia Oficial, which won the Oscar for the best foreign film in 1985. While it has many ideological problems, it brought together an important segment of the Argentine cultural community to produce a film that confronted one of the worst aspects of the so-called Dirty War of the neofacist tyranny, 1976-83, the trafficking in children in programs of spurious adoptions.

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