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The renewing miracles of family, friends, filmmakers, critics, colleagues, students , archivists, activists, a publishing house, several institutions, four cats, and the blessings of chocolate have sustained and inspired me throughout the writing of this book. I cherish all with infinite wonder and gratitude. Early versions of the manuscript, based in part on my dissertation written at Stanford University with the guidance of Mary Louise Pratt and UCSanta Cruz’s Julianne Burton-Carvajal, were completed thanks to generous grants and teaching fellowships through the Department of Spanish and Portuguese , the Programs in Chicano and Feminist Studies, the National Women Studies Association, the Minton Fund for Studies in Popular Culture , the Mabel Wilson Richards and Andrew Mellon Foundations, and the Walter J. Gores Prize. A rendition of Chapter Two was published in Spanish by Archivos de la Filmoteca 16 (Feb. 1994) [Valencia, Spain]: 36–49, thanks to editor Gastón Lillo. Chapter One saw a previous incarnation in Spectator: The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television Criticism 13.1 (fall 1992): 52–69, edited by Chon Noriega. Assistance from my current institution , the University of New Mexico (site of the world’s most engaging students ), has included crucial support from a University teaching award, College of Fine Arts research grants, and timely backing from my home department, Media Arts. Other organizations and their administrators in Mexico and the United States have also offered essential help. My thanks especially to the Cineteca Nacional de México and to the Universidad Autónoma de México’s Filmoteca for opening their archives and screening rooms and for providing me with numerous production stills. Gracias mil to Rogelio and Xóchitl Agrasánchez for stills from their Mexican Film Archive, recaptured electronically with other visual material by the wizardry of Dennis DeHart and Dan Herbert. My thanks to muralist Charles Freeman for permission to print my photo of his inspiring mural, Return to the Light. I am A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S xiii indebted to the Cine Media Project at UC-Santa Cruz, the Film and Television Archive at UCLA, and Stanford University for funding my participation in a series of conferences on Mexican cinema and culture that significantly influenced my post-thesis work. Over the long haul I’ve benefited inestimably from readers who have transfused my thinking and writing with their knowledge and skill. Julianne Burton-Carvajal was fundamental in exciting my interest in the field she has worked to establish and promote. I am also grateful for her permission to cite from her English translation of her Matilde Landeta: Hija de la Revolución (Mexico City: IMCINE and CONACULTA, 2002). As imaginative mentor and incisive dissertation co-chair, she has my everlasting gratitude, as does cochair Mary Louise Pratt, who instrumentally shaped my ideas about intercultural arenas. The melodramas discussed in this book form part of, and comment upon, the domain she calls “contact zones”—those “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination. . . .” My understanding of transculturation as a dynamic that works on all members of the contact zone owes much to her work. Carlos Monsiváis, whose patient instruction illuminated me on many occasions and in many cities, has both my thanks and awe: only the most dedicated cinephile would accompany me to double features after the last half-dozen conference screenings. Elena Poniatowska welcomed me into her home and offered stimulating conversations during my initial summer of research in Mexico that I shall always recall with delight. While in Northern California, I profoundly appreciated the scholarship and responses of professors Tomás Ybarra Frausto, the late Arturo Islas, Norma Alarcón, Michael Predmore, Chon Noriega, and Claire F. Fox. Southern California lent me an ocean and Daniel Moreno’s political savvy with which to enrich my life and work. In New Mexico I found the indispensable wisdom and commentaries of mentors and colleagues extraordinare: theorists Ruth Salvaggio (who read the manuscript multiple times), Minrose Gwin, Diana Robin, and Kim López (doubling as penultimate copyeditor); filmmakers Deborah Fort, Ann Skinner-Jones, and Nina Fonoroff. My (excessive?) passion for the genre of excess notwithstanding, Department Chief Ira Jaffe, scholar of quiescent films, has read and discussed my work with a wonderful willingness to walk on the wild side, where colleague Gus Blaisdell has already been shouting his encouragement. Readers for SUNY Press, including Cynthia...

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