A symposium to celebrate NYU Library’s acquisition of a collection of Spanish Kiosk Literature series

In 2019, NYU Libraries purchased a number of items from the library of the late Luis G. Granjel, bibliophile and scholar of the history of medicine at Salamanca University. The items purchased include a number of early twentieth-century novella series published weekly and sold cheaply by subscription or at newsstands; hence the label “Kiosk Literature”. The series purchased by NYU are La Novela Corta, La Novela Semanal, La Novela Mundial, El Cuento Azul, Los Contemporáneos, Los Noveles, El Cuento Decenal, Los Cuentistas, La Novela Popular Contemporánea.

Directed by Jo Labanyi

Jo Labanyi is Professor Emerita in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at NYU. Her research interests include modern Spanish literature and film, popular culture, gender studies, memory studies, and the history of the emotions. Her most recent books are Spanish Culture from Romanticism to the Present: Structures of Feeling (2019) and, co-authored with L. Elena Delgado, Modern Literatures in Spain (2023). She is currently writing a cultural history of the Spanish Civil War.

Thursday November 9

2:00-4:00 Display of sample Spanish Kiosk Literature series acquired by NYU Library. Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, Special Collections (Room 251), 2nd floor. For speakers and New York-area faculty and graduate students. By invitation only since places are limited.

The rest of the program takes place at the KJCC (53 Washington Square South)

6:30-6:45 Welcome and introduction (Jo Labanyi)

6:45-7:45 Keynote 1: Susan Larson “Kiosk literature as a geography of cultural objects”

7:45 RECEPTION

Friday November 10

10:00-11:30 Keynote 2:

Pura Fernández (online): “Los géneros menores y las emociones mayores: genealogía de la literatura de kiosco o el triunfo de la emancipación autoral”

11:30-12:00 COFFEE BREAK

12:00-1:30 Panel 1

Leila Carbonell: “Cataloguing NYU’s collection of Spanish kiosk literature”

Maite Zubiaurre: “Cyber-sicalipsis: digital archives, erotica, and kiosk literature”

Jordana Mendelson and Vega Torres Sastrús: “Don’t look away: commercial artists at the crossroads of Spanish modernity”

1:30-2:30 LUNCH BREAK

2:30-4:00 Panel 2

Thomas Antorino: “Readers and writers in women’s kiosk literature” Eva Woods, “Counter-archiving the colonialist novela corta”

Jeffrey Zamostny: “Kiosk collections and queer sociability”

4:00-5:00 Panel 3

Andrew Lee: “The role of kiosk series in Spanish anarchist propaganda”

Jo Labanyi: “Constructing a popular readership”

5:00 WRAP UP (Jo Labanyi)