Maria Blanca de Lizaur Guerra (born 1966), commonly known as Blanca de Lizaur, is a writer and researcher specialized in cultural studies, communications and literature. She was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to Spanish parents.

Blanca de Lizaur
BornMaría Blanca de Lizaur Guerra
1966
Ciudad de México, Mexico
OccupationProfessor, speaker, essayist, researcher
Period1985–2013
GenreScholarly, reference, essay, investigative journalism, non-fiction
Website
www.bdlizaur.es

She has a doctorate in philology from the Universidad de Alcala in Spain. Her articles have appeared in numerous academic journals, and she has taught and given conferences in Mexico, the United States and Spain.

Blanca de Lizaur is recognized as having made important contributions to the study of the telenovela format, establishing the equivalency of the Latin American telenovela with American soap operas and Canadian téléromans, and about the definition of melodrama. In regard to Literary Theory and Cultural Studies' different schools of thought (and their corresponding theses and antitheses), Blanca de Lizaur is considered to be the first scholar to offer in her work, a structured synthesis (one that encompasses previous scholars' main approaches and contributions, in a meaningful way that responds to reality)[citation needed].

Career

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Blanca de Lizaur entered the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in 1985 to study Spanish Language and Literature. That same year Televisa organized a national competition for telenovela writers in which she participated and for which she was awarded a scholarship to study the telenovela at Televisa. Thus, in 1986 and 1987 Blanca de Lizaur studied under the guidance of important authors such as Fernanda Villeli, Carlos Olmos, Carlos Tellez and Luis Reyes de la Maza. Upon completing both the telenovela courses and her degree, she decided to devote herself to the study of popular literary products – their aesthetics, their social function, their effects on society, their behaviour as commercial products, as well as to the definition of the telenovela as such, and as a cultural phenomenon. That is how she became a content specialist for media and the internet [citation needed].

In 1996 her article "La telenovela como literatura popular" (telenovela as popular literature) appeared in a monograph about popular literature published by Ánthropos 166–167, coordinated by María Cruz García de Enterría, renowned for her research into popular works in Spanish Golden Age literature.[1]

In 1997 she was invited to speak about the telenovela in Mexico at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C. In 2002 she was invited as a visiting professor to Stanford University for research purposes. That same year she met Prof. Walter J. Ong (former Modern Language of America president), Saint Louis University, after corresponding for several years.[2]

In 1999, de Lizaur went to Spain to study for her doctorate in philology, under the guidance of María Cruz García de Enterría and Antonio Fernández Ferrer. In 2002 she was awarded a grant from the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (the Mexican National Endowment for the Arts) for postgraduate study abroad. In 2004 she was awarded the Cervantes Grant (Universidad de Alcala and Grupo Santander), coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote.

Her work has been cited in a number of countries.[3][4][5][6]

Publications

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Over 25 years of work, Blanca de Lizaur has published numerous articles, conference papers and interviews.

  • La telenovela en México 1958–2002: Forma y contenido de un formato narrativo de ficción de alcance mayoritario[7]
  • "La telenovela como literatura popular" (id est: Telenovelas as popular literature).[1]
  • Teoría literaria de las obras de consumo popular (id est: A literary theory about works created for popular consumption).[8]
  • "El arte verbal dominante-no prestigiado y la distinción entre diversos tipos de arte verbal" (id est: Hegemonical yet non prestigious verbal art, and the differences between types of verbal art).[9]
  • "El perfil literario del siglo XX: La literatura mexicana 'culta' y los valores de la colectividad" (id est: The literary profile of the 20th Century: High brow (élite) literature and its unique stance in regard to collective values, ideas and beliefs).[10]
  • "La literatura marginada: Visión de una forma cultural" (id est: Marginalized literature: A new vision of an ancient cultural phenomenum).[11]
  • "La telenovela como melodrama, y su aprovechamiento pedagógico" (id est: Telenovelas as melodrama, and its pedagogical uses).
  • "La telenovela y el control de contenidos en la televisión mexicana, desde sus inicios hasta el período de 1984 a 1985" (id est: Telenovelas and content control in Mexican television, since their inception and until the 1984–1985 period).[12]
  • "La violencia y los 'medios' de comunicación: Libertad de expresión y [libertad de] recepción" (id est: Violence and the media: Freedom of expression, and freedom of reception).[13]

References

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  1. ^ a b Lizaur, Blanca de (1995). "La telenovela como literatura popular". Anthropos Revista De Documentacion Cientifica De La Cultura. Anthropos Editorial. pp. 133–135. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  2. ^ "Walter J. Ong Manuscript Collection DOC MSS 64, 1912–2008". Saint Louis University Libraries Special Collections: Archives and Manuscripts. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  3. ^ "Espejismos: El morbo: ¿Sólo atracción malsana? Análisis de su conceptualización en dos culturas". Archived from the original on 23 January 2015. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
  4. ^ Marcos González, Ana. 2010: "Aquí me siento a contar: presencias de la canción popular mexicana en la narrativa hispánica contemporánea". Tesis Doctoral de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Universidad de Granada 724p.
  5. ^ Guadarama, R., Luis A. 2007: "Sistemas de clacificación para contenidos mediáticos. Una revisión en ocho países". Convergencia, 14(043):73–103. ISSN 1405-1435]
  6. ^ Castillo S., Andrea C. 2008: Transformación del personaje en el melodrama 'nuevos prtagonistas' Archived 21 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine. Trabajo de Grado de la Facultad de comunicación y Lenguaje de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Bogotá. 57p.
  7. ^ La telenovela en México 1958–2002: Forma y contenido de un formato narrativo de ficción de alcance mayoritario. Tesis de Maestría en Letras Mexicanas. Univ. Nal. Autónoma de México. 2002.
  8. ^ Teoría literaria de las obras de consumo popular (Título oficial: Lo popular y sus contextos contemporáneos, teoría literaria y medios). Tesis de Doctorado en Filología. Univ. de Alcalá, España, 2009.
  9. ^ "El arte verbal dominante-no prestigiado y la distinción entre diversos tipos de arte verbal". La Experiencia Literaria (1993): 127–141.
  10. ^ "El perfil literario del siglo XX: La literatura mexicana 'culta' y los valores de la colectividad". La Experiencia Literaria (1997): 205–220.
  11. ^ "La literatura marginada: Visión de una forma cultural", en Oralidad y escritura; Eugenia Revueltas y Herón Pérez Martínez, compiladores; Zamora, El Colegio de Michoacán, 1992; págs. 207 a 212.
  12. ^ "La telenovela y el control de contenidos en la televisión mexicana, desde sus inicios hasta el período de 1984 a 1985"; La Experiencia Literaria (2003): 25–44.
  13. ^ "La violencia y los ‘medios’ de comunicación: Libertad de expresión y recepción", Humanidades # 91, págs. 3 y 7.
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