2. Cultural Studies
Coordinator: Dr.Jesús Mario Lozano Alamilla

Cultural studies have expanded significantly in American universities and around the world, in particular in the latter decades of the twentieth century. This discipline is an essential and decisive part of what has been called the rise of visual studies. Postmodern theories and French critical theory (sometimes still called post-structuralist theory) of thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Julia Kristeva and even Jacques Lacan or Roland Barthes played a crucial role in the inquiry into concepts such as 'nature,' 'objectivity,' 'identity,' 'genre,' 'history' and 'difference,' which has led to the appearance of new modes of studying, not 'reality' but rather the discursive practices that describe, analyze, distribute and order it.

On the one hand, this exposes different devices of power or phallogocentric hegemonic relationships inherent in the academic tradition and, on the other, promotes the reassessment of different interdisciplinary approximations and the formation of new conceptual maps that will lead to innovative and highly relevant debates, which in turn will enable us to rethink the history of knowledge creation and the production of sense in our times.

Visual studies has become one of these approximations by directly questioning traditional art history and aesthetic studies, offering a new theoretical perspective beyond the cultural, social, national and even racial limitations or prejudices on which these disciplines have at times been explicitly or implicitly founded.

This group proposes a re-evaluation of such questions, while critically evaluating the consequences of the rise of cultural studies, especially with regards to visual studies and the arts, as well as attendant difficulties, limitations and dilemmas.

Cultural Studies and the Social Function of Academic Knowledge: Transfer or Consolidation?
Dr. Alberto López Cuenca

Syncretism, Performances and Contemporary Art in Latin America
Dr. Álvaro Villalobos Herrera

The Unavoidable Truth of Damien Hirst: A Case of Borders between Art History, Folk Registers and the Logic of Marketing
Dr. Francisco López Ruiz

Networks of Knowledge and the Formation of Art Professionals at Public Universities: Sociology of Art
Dr. Julio César Schara

About Dr. Jesús Mario Lozano Alamilla

Lozano Alamilla holds a doctorate in Philosophy from the Media and Communication Department of the European School of Graduates with a scholarship from the Educator Improvement Program, where he attended seminars offered by directors Peter Greenaway and John Waters. In 1996, he obtained a master’s degree in Performance Studies through the Central School of Speech and Drama in London with a scholarship from the British Council.
Lozano Alamilla’s directorial debut was a film titled Así, which premiered at the International Critics’ Week of the 64th Venice Film Festival and was later screened at various national and international festivals, including the London Film Festival and Goteborg Film Festival. Film critics in Mexico and abroad have given the film positive reviews.