Cuban-American academic Ana M. López passed away last Monday, June 19. She was one of the foremost scholars on Latin American cinema in the world. Her research focused on Latin American and Latino film and cultural studies, specializing in melodrama and performance in the Golden Age Cinemas of the region, early silent cinema and modernity, documentary, telenovelas, Cuban American media, and intermediality.
López was the author of Two Worlds: Cinematic Encounters in the Americas (1993, edited with John King and Manuel Alvarado), The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts (1996, edited with Chon A. Noriega), and Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Cultures (2000, edited with Daniel Balderston and Mike Gonzalez), and the collection of essays Hollywood, Nuestra América y los Latinos (Ediciones Unión, Havana, 2012). She was also co-editor (with Marvin D’Lugo and Laura Podalsky) of The Routledge Companion to Latin American Cinema (2017) and the editor in chief of the Intellect journal Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas. She published over three dozen essays and book chapters.
López was professor of Communication and director of the Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she also served as associate provost for Faculty Affairs. She arrived at Tulane in 1986 as an assistant professor in the Department of Communication.
SUNY Press recently released the book Ana M. López: Essays, which declared López “one of the foremost film and media scholars in the world.” Edited by Laura Podalsky and Dolores Tierney, the book—divided into three sections: the transnational turn in Latin American film studies; analysis of genre and modes; and debates surrounding race, ethnicity, and gender—compiled twenty-five essays from throughout López career, including three that have been translated into English for this volume.
López received her BA from Queens College of the City of New York, where she majored in accounting. She earned both her MA in communications and theater arts (film studies) and her PhD in communication studies from the University of Iowa. In the fall of 1989, she served as the Fulbright Cinema Professor at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Instituto de Artes e Comunicação Social in Brazil. In the spring of 1995, she served as a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, Critical Studies, School of Cinema/TV.
According to Tulane University, “López's groundbreaking essays have transformed Latin American film studies, opening up new approaches, theoretical frameworks, and lines of investigation while also extending beyond cinema to analyze its connections with television, radio, and broader cultural phenomena.”
