Ghostly Landscapes

Patricia Keller analyses the aesthetics of haunting and the relationship between ideology and image production by revisiting twentieth-century Spanish history through the camera’s lens.

Patricia M. Keller is an assistant professor in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University.

‘In her fascinating Ghostly Landscapes, Patricia Keller considers instances of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic use of film and photography over the past eighty years of Spanish history.’

Raul A. Marrero-Fente, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Minnesota:

“Ghostly Landscapes constitutes a valuable addition to the growing corpus of Spanish visual studies that has made possible the task of revising contemporary Spanish history. The documentaries, films, and photographs within portray the realities confronted by the Spanish people during the Francoist regime, while also offering a unique insight into the transition to democracy.”

Justin Crumbaugh, Department of Spanish, Latina/o, and Latin American Studies, Mount Holyoke College:

“In Ghostly Landscapes, Patricia M. Keller offers a novel theorization of haunting as an aesthetic register inextricably tied to the visual and to landscape. Keller is thoroughly familiar with relevant scholarship on film, photography, haunting, representations of landscape, memory studies, and contemporary Spanish history and culture, and her mastery of critical theory is dazzling.”