Matthew Bush is Professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and literatures. His research and teaching examine contemporary Latin American narrative and culture, focusing primarily on Mexico, Peru, and Argentina. His interests include critical theory, affect studies, melodrama, historical and neo-avant-garde artistic practices, the Latin American social novel, and media and globalization in contemporary Latin American art.
Professor Bush's most recent book, Other Americans: The Art of Latin America in the US Imaginary (Pittsburgh, 2022; Spanish edition: Los otros americanos, Fondo de Cultura Económica, forthcoming), examines highly successful works of literature, film, and television –measured in both academic and popular reception– portraying life in Latin America. Grounded in analyses of melodramatic aesthetics and affect theory, Other Americans offers an approach to how US audiences feel about their neighbors to the south, which shapes ideological perspectives on hemispheric relations.
Bush is also the author of Pragmatic Passions: Melodrama and Latin American Social Narrative (Iberoamericana, 2014), and co-editor of the volumes Un asombro renovado: Vanguardias contemporáneas en América Latina (Iberoamericana, 2017) and Technology, Literature, and Digital Culture in Latin America: Mediatized Sensibilities in a Globalized Era (Routledge, 2016).