2019 PAMLA Conference Plenary Address

Please join us for the 2019 PAMLA Plenary Address and Luncheon on Saturday, November 16, beginning at 11:45 am. Our Plenary speaker, Dr. Paul Alonso, will be delivering an address titled “Clowns and Court Jesters as Political Communicators: Mexican Brozo and Other TV Satirists in the Americas.” The Plenary Address Luncheon, which does involve an additional expense, is sure to be a highlight of the conference. Go here to make a reservation: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/

In the post-truth era—dominated by global infotainment, celebrity culture, and fake news—new satirical political communicators have emerged in public discourse, challenging notions of “truth,” “journalism,” and “freedom of expression.” This talk focuses on clowns and court jesters from the Americas that have confronted power in their nations, negotiating their own authority and subversive role within the established political, social, economic, and cultural structures.

Dr. Paul Alonso, Associate Professor in the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Tech, holds a Ph.D. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. His book Satiric TV in the Americas (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a pioneer study on the convergence of journalism, entertainment, satire, politics, and popular culture in Latin America. In this work, Alonso addresses the figure of the clown, highlighted in the chapter about Brozo, “Televisa’s Grotesque Clown as Transgressive Journalism in Mexico.” Alonso’s research on satiric personas, court jesters, and clowns has been presented at a variety of international conferences, and appeared in journals such as the Bulletin of Latin American Research, The Journal of Popular Culture, Cuadernos.info, The Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, and included in edited collections.

A Peruvian journalist and author, Alonso has published in some of the most prestigious newspapers in Spanish (such as El País and El Nuevo Herald), and in diverse international magazines. He is the author of three books of fiction and has hosted a weekly interview show and a digital satiric show in Peru. Before joining Georgia Tech, Alonso was also a staff member of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. He is currently the director of Polivision, a bilingual and multimedia outlet based in Atlanta that covers Latin(o) American and Global Cultures.