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Queering the Nation from the Other Side: Juan Gabriel, Performance, and the Margins of Mexicanidad
March 5, 2015, 7:00 PM
FreeAlberto Aguilera Valadez, known as Juan Gabriel, is one of the most prolific and successful Mexican songwriters and performers of the last 40 years and an icon of contemporary Mexican popular culture. His effeminate public persona has prompted fans and critics alike to question his masculinity. Alejandro Madrid, professor of musicology at Cornell, will discuss the films Al otro lado del puente and El Noa Noa, the songs "La frontera" and "Canción 187," and the album El México que se nos fue in relation to the notion of "the other side" -- which Mexicans and Mexican-Americans use both when speaking of the land on "the other side" of the Rio Grande and as a synonym for homosexuality. Madrid will explore the relationship between the geographic borders of the nation-state and the imagined borders of Mexican masculinity.