Josué Brocca is a writer, editor, and Hispanist interested in interdisciplinary practices. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the School of Philosophy and Literature from the National University of Mexico (UNAM), a Master of Philosophy in European, Latin American and Comparative Literatures and Cultures (University of Cambridge), and a technical degree in Photography.
He has published academic papers and fiction in periodicals in Mexico and the United Kingdom.
From 2022 to the start of 2024, Josué worked at UNAM as the head of publishing for the Institute for Bibliographic Research/National Library, where he supervised the publication of its quarterly review, the Boletín de la Biblioteca Nacional de México, and a number of award-winning academic monographs.
Besides his literary and academic endeavors, Josué has an interest in the visual arts and media. In 2020, his video-essay series La geometría interior received a grant from the Arts and Culture Fund (FONCA) in Mexico. He has also worked in film, digital media, and curatorial practice.
Poetics of Silence and Intermedial Aesthetics in Ibero-America (1950-1980)
On the basis that the mid twentieth century and the first decades to follow (1950-1980) can be described as a period in cultural history marked by the politization of the aesthetic and the exploration of semantic boundaries in artistic disciplines, my research focuses mainly on works from this time period in which the poetic recourse to silence is both formally and thematically significant. My investigations focus on poets, novelists, artists, and filmmakers ranging from different corners of the Ibero-American region, and who engaged with these avant-garde preoccupations from different intermedial approaches, ranging from surrealist poems of La Generación del 27 to the Fluxus-inspired artist-books of the Beau Geste Press.
Conference Papers
- “Silence, absence, and politics in Luis Cernuda's Desolación de la quimera”. Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland (University of Birmingham, 2024).
- “Conjunciones sobre la bibliografía y la edición. Libros sobre libros”. XXV Jornadas académicas del Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2023).
- “El Boletín de la Biblioteca Nacional de México: Procesos editoriales y prospectiva”. XXIV Jornadas académicas del Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2022).
- “Negative Poetics: Mapping Silence, Hybridity and Resistance. Intermedial works of literature, art and film in Latin America (1968-2007).” Quo Vadis Conference, UCL (University College London, online, 2021).
- “Silencios intermediales: representaciones de la nada desde la hibridez latinoamericana”. Presented at “9o Simposio BCE”. (Maison Universitaire Franco-Mexicain, online, 2020).
- “Reacciones hispanas frente a la desolación de la modernidad: Diego contra Rockefeller, Lorca frente a Whitman”. Presented at the “Transatlantic New York” conference (City College of New York, Instituto Cervantes, Brown University, 2017).
Publications
Academia
- "A Tradition and its Metamorphoses (1967-2024). Corporeal Poetics in Works By Octavio Paz, Ulises Carrión and Rocío Cerón". Intermedialités 44, 2024 [In revisions]
- “Catharsis, Transtextuality, and Poetic Persona in Pessoa Campos's 'Saudação a Walt Whitman'”. Portuguese Studies 39.2, 2023.
Creative writing and literary criticism
- “Lo que se graba en las rocas. En el pozo de mis ojos, Mariana Bernárdez”, Periódico de Poesía, January 2024.
- “Leer a través de las sombras. Desolación de la quimera a sesenta años de la muerte de Luis Cernuda”, Casa del Tiempo 13, VI, 2024.
- “Más allá de la realidad y el deseo. Luis Cernuda entre mundos, a 60 años de su muerte”, Boletín de la Biblioteca Nacional de México, 19, 2023.
- “Ana Karénina. Un haz de realidades”, Otros Diálogos 25, 2023.
- “La celebración del Bloomsday número cien y asomos editoriales al Ulysses desde la Biblioteca Nacional de México”, Boletín de la Biblioteca Nacional de México, 14, 2022.
- “La flecha en el espejo. Árbol de Diana de Alejandra Pizarnik”, Casa del Tiempo 1, época VI, 2022.
- 'La duda de lo diverso', Luvina, 108, 2022.
- 'Notas del fotógrafo”, in Ingrid Solana, Memorias tullidas del Paraíso, Dharma Books, México, 2021.
- “A Feral Call”, Polyglossia, 2021.
- “Ficciones de Möbius”, Otros Diálogos, 10, 2020.
- “Dos Sebastianes”, Vice, 2017.
Other activities and roles
- Academic convenor of “Más allá de la realidad y el deseo. Homenaje a 60 años de la muerte de Luis Cernuda”, with the participation of Dr. James Valender and Dr. Vicente Quirarte, at the Institute for Bibliographic Research / National Library of Mexico, UNAM, November 2023
- Academic convenor of “De libretos, puestas y páginas. A 400 años del primer folio de Shakespeare”, with the participation of Dr. Alfredo Michel Modenessi at the Institute for Bibliographic Research / National Library of Mexico, UNAM, June 2023.
- Teaching assistant to the course “Intermedialidad, literatura, artes y medios” by Dr. Roberto Cruz Arzabal. Department of Spanish and Hispanic Literatures, School of Philosophy and Literature, UNAM, August to December 2017.
I am interested in supervising undergraduate projects that connect modern Spanish and Lusophone literatures with aesthetics, intermediality, and comparative methodologies.
