Presentation Schedule
“The Martians Are Always Coming”: On Lifeforms on the Moon and Other Planets at the Turn of the 20th Century Spanish Newspapers and Literature (86754)
Session Chair: Mario Sanchez Gumiel
Thursday, 31 October 2024 10:30
Session: Session 1
Room: Room 106
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
Thanks to the development of print media in Spain during the 19th century, there was an increase of the proliferation of articles, essays, short stories, drawings, and popular fiction speculating about alien lifeforms. These texts not only speculated about the possibility of alien life on the moon and other planets but also were used to discuss the nature of Spaniards and their sociopolitical problems at that time. In doing so, the figure of the alien was often used as an external observer to criticize the customs, habits and vices of Spaniards, thus encouraging a call for change. This presentation will offer a survey of texts published in Spain from the second half of the 19th century to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936) that envisaged situations involving interaction between Earth’s inhabitants and extraterrestrial beings. It will analyze short novels, cartoons and articles in newspapers, such as "El Español", "Crónica de Madrid", and "Buen humor", which depicted the existence of lifeforms on the moon and other planets not only for entertainment but also for scientific research. In doing so, the presentation aims to show how those texts served to raise a series of questions about the history of Spain at the turn of the 20th century (e.g., industrial development, the end of the Spanish Empire…) as well as broader questions on the nature of scientific research, the place of humanity in the cosmos, and the discovery of otherness.
Authors:
Mario Sanchez Gumiel, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, United States
About the Presenter(s)
Mario Sánchez Gumiel is a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan. He expects to graduate on June 2024.
See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule
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