William A. Nericcio

Dr. William A. Nericcio is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University . He considers himself an American Lit scholar, Latin Americanist, Chicana/Chicano Studies devotee/vato, wanna-be Film Studies Guru, Cultural Studies maven, and, last but not least, and devoted rasquache Tejano acolyte of Deconstruction. Nericcio has published articles on Orson Welle’s proto-Chicano masterpiece Touch of Evil and Octavio Paz.

Some of his works include his 1998 illustrated exposé on Speedy Gonzales, “Autopsy of a Rat: Odd, Sundry Parables of Freddy Lopez, Speedy Gonzales, and Other Chicano/Latino Marionettes Prancing about Our First World Visual Emporium,” a revised and expanded essay on Rita Hayworth, electrolysis, and the existential in Violence and the Body;  a illustrated meditation on Gilbert Hernandez’s illustrated biography of Frida Kahlo in Latina/o Popular Culture; and the article on Undocument Worker Violence,The Marquis de Sade and California Law Enforcement for BAD SUBJECTS.He is also the co-editor of a forthcoming collection, The Border of Things: Representations de la frontera.

Nericcio's primary ongoing critical work, which he will be presenting at Oberlin, is an illustrated history of Mexican and Latina/o stereotypes, Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" In America -- "The substance of the Tex[t]-Mex project is the wily retinue of animated, conjured, fabricated, costumed 'monsters' that pass for 'Mexicans' in the popular imagination of the United States-monsters like the posed corpses from the US/Mexico military skirmishes that find their way onto postcards (the email of their day), like the 'half-breed' in Orson Welles's Touch of Evil that drives its Falstaffian anti-hero, the film's director, to murder and more; like Speedy Gonzales, child of the imagination of Warner Bros.' genius animators and monstrous acme of the American stereotype industry."