Will Benner, Ph.D.

Contact

wbenner@twu.edu
940-898-2316
CFO 910

Biography

My research focuses on the recent artistic productions by the post-dictatorship generation in Argentina and how these works relate to ethical and theoretical challenges in human rights activism. My articles "El documental sin fin: filmar al desaparecido," published in Archivos de la Filmoteca (Oct. 2017), and "Blogging Disappearance in Diario de una princesa montonera by Mariana Eva Perez," published in Chasqui: revista de literatura Latinoamericana (May 2018), examine how feedback loops created between the reader and the author encourage memory entrepreneurship. In doing so, my scholarship sheds light on how the post-dictatorship generation has developed strong inter-generational and horizontal modes of transmission of memory that do not privilege victims of state terror.

Education

Ph.D., Spanish and Portuguese, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
M.A., Spanish, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
B.S., Psychology, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC

Research Interests

Memory Politics; Human Rights Activism in the Southern Cone; Post-Dictatorship Literature and Film; Women's Studies in Latin America

Latest Articles

Digital Archives and Intergenerational Reckoning with Chile's Traumatic Past in Mis documentos (2014) and Poeta Chileno (2020) by Alejandro Zambra
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (2022)
William R. Benner

Blogging Disappearance in Diario de una princesa montonera by Mariana Eva Perez
Chasqui; Revista de literatura Latinoamericana (2018)
William R Benner

El documental sin fin: filmar al desaparecido
Archivos de la Filmoteca (2017)
William R Benner

Chapters

Marooned Testimony: Chilean Island Landscape and Memory Politics in Sebastian Silva's Magic Magic (2013)
in The Film Archipelago: Islands in Latin American Cinema | Bloomsbury Publishing (2022)
William R. Benner

Current Projects

 

Externally Funded Projects

IDEAS Capacity Building Program for US Study Abroad
U.S. Department of State | $34,970.00 | 2020
Role: Co-Principal Investigator

Marshall T. Meyer Research Travel Grant
Human Rights Archive at Duke University | $500.00 | 2018
Role: Principal Investigator

Summer Research Fellow
GOV-Department of Education (DE) | $3,000.00 | 2018
Role: Principal Investigator

Internally Funded Projects

Proposal Development Grant Program Spring 2019 Release
$10,000.00 | 2019
Research Grant