Alicia Cerezo Paredes

Spring 2026 Office Hours

by appointment

Education

PhD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Biography

Associate Professor Alicia Cerezo specializes in modern Spanish literature and culture. Her research explores how interactions between text and image, as well as technology and art, shape ideas of creativity and humanness, particularly in multimedia environments such as nineteenth-century newspapers, miscellaneous magazines, and illustrated narratives; early twentieth-century silent film; and contemporary experimental film and graphic novels. Her current book project, tentatively titled “Cintas medio borrosas”: Los primeros años del cinematógrafo en España [Out of Focus: The First Years of the Spanish Cinematograph], is a six-chapter monograph on early Spanish films (1896-1918) and the intellectual and popular responses to the new invention, offering a comprehensive analisys of this foundational period in Spanish screen culture. She is also a dedicated teacher, deeply committed to supporting the learning and well-being of her undergraduate and graduate students. In 2015, she received the Class of 1955 Teaching Excellence Award.

Selected Publications

Book

“Cada espíritu es un libro”: Espiritismo, ciencia y sociedad en el fin de siglo [“Every Spirit Is a Book”: Spiritualism, Science and Society at the Turn of the Century]. Madrid: Pliegos, 2016.

Edited Volume

Modernity and Epistemology in Nineteenth Century Spain: Fringe Discourses. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. Co-edited with Ryan Davis.

Articles and Book Chapters

“La duración de un flash o la historia en una fotografía: Paco Roca y su Regreso al Edén” [The Duration of a Flash or the (Hi)story in a Picture: Paco Roca and his Regreso al Edén”]. Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos. Special Issue: Nuevas tendencias, géneros y lenguajes gráficos del cómic español en el siglo XXI. In press.

“De estampitas y películas: Postales, cine y transformación social en un análisis cultural de Pardo Bazán” [“On Estampitas and Movies: Postcards, Cinema and Social Transformation in a Cultural Analysis by Pardo Bazán”]. La Tribuna: Cadernos de Estudos da Casa-Museo Emilia Pardo Bazán 19 (2024): 32-47.

“La última carta de José Luis Guerin a Jonas Mekas: La estética de la empatía en la mirada cinematográfica” [“The Last Letter from José Luis Guerin to Jonas Mekas: The Aesthetics of Empathy in the Cinematographic Gaze”]. Romance Quarterly 69.1 (2022): 1-15.

“‘Cintas medio borrosas’: Monumentalidad y memoria en el cine mudo temprano” [“‘Blurry Films’: Monumentality and Memory in Early Silent Film”]. Decimonónica 18.1-2 (2021): 1-17.

“Pardo Bazán and the Images of an Era.” Approaches to Teaching the Writings of Emilia Pardo Bazán, edited by Margot Versteeg and Susan Walter. New York: MLA, 2017. 177-81.

“Segundo de Chomón y el arte de un cine ‘sin literatura’” [“Segundo de Chomón and the Art of a Cinema ‘Without Words’”]. Hispanófila 179 (2017): 125-40.

“Biología, arte y exotismo en el cine mudo de Segundo de Chomón” [“Biology, Art and Exoticism in Segundo de Chomón’s Silent Cinema”]. Journal of Hispanic Modernism 5 (2014): 5-22.

“Faustina Sáez de Melgar y las mujeres ‘pintadas por sí mismas’: Una representación correctiva de la feminidad y una visión alternativa del costumbrismo” [“Faustina Sáez de Melgar and the Women ‘Painted by Themselves’: A Corrective Representation of Femininity and an Alternative Vision of Costumbrismo”]. Letras Femeninas 36.2 (2011): 39-59.

“Esfinges, tribunas y feítas: Mujeres trabajadoras en imágenes y textos del fin de siglo español” [“Sphinxes, Tribunes and Feítas: Female Workers in Images and Texts of Turn-of-the-Century Spain”]. Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 43 (2009): 563-90.