12/11/2024

ST. LOUIS – Saint Louis University’s Amy E. Wright, Ph.D., received an honorable mention from the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) for the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for an outstanding book published in English or Spanish in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and cultures.

Wright, a professor of Hispanic Studies at SLU, received the honor for her book Serial Mexico: Storytelling across Media, from Nationhood to Now, published in 2023 by Vanderbilt University Press.

The 2024 Kovacs Prize was awarded to Catherine Brown, professor of comparative literature and the Residential College at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for Remember the Hand: Manuscription in Early Medieval Iberia, published by Fordham University Press. Sharing honorable mention honors with Wright is Isabel C. Gómez, associate professor of Latin American and Iberian studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for Cannibal Translation: Literary Reciprocity in Contemporary Latin America, published by Northwestern University Press.

“I am deeply honored to receive this honorable mention,” Wright said. “I am humbled to be included in this impressive cohort of scholars. This recognition is particularly meaningful to me a it highlights the importance of rigorous scholarship and the celebration of diverse cultural narratives.”

The MLA award committee’s citation notes, “Amy E. Wright’s Serial Mexico: Storytelling across Media, from Nationhood to Now is a masterful analysis of transmedial serial storytelling. The book is well conceived and plotted, knitting together cogent analyses of nation as family, the relationship of popular form (in this case seriality) to the solidification of identity, and the paradoxical use of an anti-establishment antihero to push normativity. Serial Mexico will likely serve not only as a reference for future studies of serial storytelling in nineteenth- through twentieth-century Mexico but also as a point of orientation for scholarship seeking to cross geographies and broad time scales through their interrupted, periodical production. Wright offers smart, capacious, careful, innovative analyses of how the form of serialized narrative works in Mexico across time, shaping popular consumer engagement with a variety of texts, from radionovelas to comics to podcasts.”

Wright received an individual fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2022 to support the writing of the book. The highly competitive NEH fellowships recognize exceptional humanities projects on the national level, annually awarded through the United States government. The fellowships support advanced research in the humanities, with recipients producing award-winning books, digital materials or other scholarly resources.

Each year the NEH receives an average of 1,100 applications for individual projects and has a 7% funding ratio, awarding only some 70 individual fellowships out of the applications received.

Wright received her bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her master’s and doctorate at Brown University. Her research explores print culture in Mexico, popular seriality in Latin America, Latin American literary and cultural history and media studies in Mexico.

Serial Mexico: Storytelling across Media, from Nationhood to Now

Serial Mexico draws on a range of archives, historical records, and popular culture to show the resilience and breadth of serial storytelling in Mexico, from its founding to the present. The panorama shows the Mexican experience of storytelling, showcasing protagonists that mock authority, make light of hierarchy, and embrace the hybridity and mestizaje of Mexico. These tales reflect on and respond to crucial cultural concerns such as family, patriarchy, gender roles, racial mixing, urbanization, modernization, and political idealism.

“Many countries have serialized storytelling or characters that reappear in different forms,” Wright said. “Mexico has a particularly strong tradition, beginning with characters that come from the oral traditions and take on a life outside of their original story.”

Serial Mexico examines how serialized storytelling’s melodrama and sensationalism reveal key political and cultural messaging. The book explores the long-running intrigues of serial novels, comics, radio dramas, and telenovelas, as well as blogs and podcasts – while advancing new approaches to the study of Mexican culture and history.

The MLA will present awards and honor winners at its annual meeting in New Orleans on January 9-12. 

About the Modern Language Association of America

The Modern Language Association of America and its over 20,000 members in 100 countries work to strengthen the study and teaching of languages and literature. Founded in 1883, the MLA provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. The MLA sustains one of the finest publication programs in the humanities, producing a variety of publications for language and literature professionals and for the general public. The association publishes the MLA International Bibliography, the only comprehensive bibliography in language and literature, available online. The MLA Annual Convention features 750 scholarly and professional development sessions. More information on MLA programs is available at www.mla.org.

About the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize

The Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize was established in 1990 by a gift from Joseph and Mimi B. Singer, parents of the late Katherine Singer Kovacs and is awarded under the auspices of the MLA’s Committee on Honors and Awards. Katherine Singer Kovacs completed her undergraduate studies at Tufts University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and earned her MA and her PhD (in 1974) at Harvard University. She is the author of “Le Rêve et la Vie”: A Theatrical Experiment by Gustave Flaubert and articles and reviews on Latin American literature, culture, and film and on comparative literature. Kovacs was a specialist in Spanish and Latin American literature and film. She taught at Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and Whittier College. She was associate editor and coeditor of Humanities in Society, a member of the executive committee of the Quarterly Review of Film Studies, and a consultant for Latin American Perspectives. Kovacs died in May 1989.