Biography/Backstory | William Anthony Nericcio

Last Updated April 27, 2010 | Recently Updated Friday, May 12, 2017

nota bene: a less wordy, image-saturated alternative to this site is here.

eliable dispatches from elite, clandestine West Coast intelligence agents reveal that Dr. William Anthony Nericcio (aka "Memo," aka "Bill") directs an eclectic and innovative cultural studies graduate program at San Diego State University, aka MALAS, the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences. He also serves as a Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Other stealthy West Coast snoops confirm that he labors at SDSU in various academic disguises including: digital humanities lead faculty, cultural studies scholar, American and Latin American literature prof, Chicana/o Studies devotee, ALA/Choice Award-Winning Film Studies maven, American Studies lackey, and last, but not least, feverish rasquache Tejano acolyte of deconstruction 

(the Jacques Derrida t-shirt always gives it away). Other embedded, shady scouts contend Nericcio's diverse academic pursuits are merely an ivory-tower nested front, a nefarious cover for the Chicano writer's true obsessions: graphic design, web-surfing, Man Ray's photography, Euro/Indy movies, Bill Elder, Remedios Varo, Jacques Derrida, Severo Sarduy, Rosario Castellanos, and Meret Oppenheim (of late, Haruki Murakami, Tara McPherson, and Darren Aronofsky also draw his eye).

Before joining SDSU's crack team of talented, hermeneutic misfits, Nericcio held earlier postings at The University of Connecticut, his first, most infamous English Department posting, and at Cornell University, where, working with taskmaster mentors (Carlos Fuentes, Dominic LaCapra, Edgar Rosenberg, Wolfgang Holdheim, Nelly Furman, Enrico Mario Santí, Gayatri Spivak and Henry Louis Gates Jr.), he completed his doctoral degree in Comparative Literature with a dissertation entitled The Politics of Solitude: Alienation in the Literatures of the Americas. 

Our well-paid East Coast gumshoes and informants tell odd, whispered tales regarding Nericcio's time in Ithaca: his enigmatic midnight chats with Vladimir Nabokov's surly ghost in Zeus's cafe, Goldwyn Smith Hall, far above Cayuga's waters; his now epic 2am street-fight with four drunk Cornell gringo frat-rats in a snowstorm near the corner of Court and Tioga; his critical theory lucha libre disputes with Derrida-glosser Jonathan Culler and Culler's curious better-half, Cynthia Chase (a relative of once-funny, SNL-alum Chevy Chase), who deemed Nericcio's hieroglyphic notetaking a mark of incipient moronity (opposite); his legendary tequila-induced, body-sculpture-snow-angel-making with LA playwright Oliver Mayer at the top of the Buffalo St. hill; and lastly, his boisterous conjunto dancing alongside Carlos Fuentes in an Ithaca Union hall. Sadly, our usually reliable 'townie' snitches loitering outside the Haunt have failed to document these claims. 

However, not all is lost, as our diligent Northern Mexican agents, not at all resembling Mikey Vargas (Charlton Heston) from Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, recently discovered that Nericcio, a recovering Catholic school boy from South Texas (seized 1st-grade snapshot to your left), received

his Bachelor's of Arts degree in English from the University of Texas at Austin (1984), this while working part-time at the Texas Tavern (now demolished) and The Cactus Cafe as a barrista/bartender and prowling posh 6th Street cocktail lounges. This was also the time when Nericcio, along with Jay Whitley aspired to 80s, new-wave, music stardom in the indy, third-coast, rock combo, The Dyed Blondes--de rigueur recording studio snapshot to your right.

Now headquartered near the California/Mexico border with SDSU, he serves on the faculty of the Center for Latin American Studies, The Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences (MALAS) and the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies in addition to his English and CompLit teaching shenanigans. A native son of Laredo, Texas, with assorted ancestors hailing from General Téran (near Monterrey, México), Partanna, Sicily, and (it is silently whispered) the merry ol' island of England, (and maybe even Tunis!) Nericcio tells anyone willing to listen that he is a post-Movimiento Chicano. In this vein, the testimony of well-placed former students is useful, with numerous depositions existing that attest to Nericcio being a 'a Sicilian Tejano' or to him publicly declaiming nostalgic, nationalistic odes to Flaco Jimenez, La Llorona, 'Tejas' and the Rio Grande river. Other witnesses speak of overhearing eloquent soliloquies in San Diego dive bars wherein Nericcio, between sips, confesses his obsessions with Sleestaks, The Get-Away Chase Game, Al Jaffee, Monty Python, Kurt Wiese, Captain Kangaroo, Mannix, The Banana Splits, Medical Center, Wacky Packages, La India María, Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster, Land of the Lost, Dean Martin, Los Polivoces, Mil Mascaras, the late Edward Said, Gamera, and H.R. Pufnstuf.

Nericcio has published articles on Orson Welles's proto-Chicano masterpiece Touch of Evil (in Chicanos and Film: Representation and Resistance), Octavio Paz's shrouded schizophrenic political oscillations (Siglo XX/20th Century: Critique & Cultural Discourse, 10:1-2 1992-93), and Jorge Luis Borges's, Eugène Delacroix's, and Jacques Derrida's unlikely textual mènage-á-trois in Susan Daitch's LC. In 1996, Nericcio's "Artif[r]acture: Virulent Pictures, Graphic Narrative, and the Ideology of the Visual" appeared in the pages of Mosaic--the sprawling, illustrated essay was one of the first scholarly pieces to appear on comics in academe. In 1998, his 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," was brought kicking and screaming into the world by Camera Obscura, A Journal of Feminism Culture and Media Studies--now distributed by Duke University Press.

2002 saw the appearance of three publications: 1) a revised and expanded essay on Rita Hayworth, electrolysis, and the existential in Violence and the Body: Race, Gender, and the State; 2) a gratuitously illustrated meditation on Gilbert Hernandez's illustrated biography of Frida Kahlo in NYU Press's Latino/a Popular Culture; and 3) a short rant on anti-undocumented worker violence, the Marquis de Sade, and California law enforcement for BAD SUBJECTS, UC Berkeley's HOT Lefty rag. Another piece from that era (2004), ten years in the making, for The Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies examines the Paul Reubens' masturbation scandal back in the 1990s and is entitled "Watching Critics, Watching Journalists, Watching Sheriffs, Watching Pee-wee Herman Watch: The Extraordinary Case of the Saturday Morning Children's Show Celebrity Who Masturbated"--reliable snitches claim the highlight of the opus is some odd revelation about transvestites, transgendered bodies, Medical Center (The Fourth Sex, 1975), and Robert Reed (opposite), the pater familias on the Brady Bunch. 


Other noteworthy scholarly gigs include Nericcio's London lecture, "In the Storm of the Eye: Pages Torn From a Voyeur Semiotician's Diary During the Plague of Bad Theory"(1998), for Goldsmith College and the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA) and "Cinematography, Photography and Literature: Robert Frank's Aesthetic Triptych" (2000) for the Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA), San Diego. Nericcio's also has lectured abroad at the Freud Museum in London where he spoke on the 'fertile' connection between Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic work and the Viennese wizard's collection of erotic antiquities--this took place during a Fall 2001 Semester in London where Nericcio worked as a Visiting Senior Lecturer in Literature for the Foundation for Interational Education and SDSU (note the surveillance photo to your right, that's him with the strange expression standing by Freud's infamous couch). Apparently the Freud Museum guards failed to inform London authorities of various improprieties with Herr Sigmund's couch as in San Diego, Spring 2002, this candid shot was taken of Nericcio ranting about Nietzsche at a pacific REVIEW public reading. 2003 opened with Nericcio joining the editorial advisory board of Gobshite Quarterly an independent international literary magazine.

Travel also seemed to be on the agenda with lectures at NEMLA, The University of Connecticut's Department of English, and Brown University's Department of Africana Studies, topped off with a visit to the Netherlands where Nericcio chaired a panel and delivered a lecture at the first Congress of the International Association of American Studies in Leiden. Summer 2003 found him once again leading a group of adventurous SDSU students to London for the 1st annual LONDON CALLING, SDSU Summer Program. He has subsequently led UK-junkets in 2005, 2007, and 2009.

November 2003 saw Nericcio working as the warm-up act (spycam shot opposite) for the Ballet Nacional de Cuba for the La Jolla Music Society. December 2003, Nericcio delivered a harangue for Affirmative Action at the San Diego MLA for its ADE/ADFL enclaves. In February 2004, Nericcio enjoyed his Spring sabbatical--but took a break from

occasional naps by jetting up to the East Coast in February for a cool Gangster Symposia at the SUNY Stony Brook Humanities Research Institute--click young John Gotti's mug to your right for more info.

In Summer 2004, Nericcio, taking a break from the vagaries of the University Lecture Hall, traded chalk for pine tar as he played utility outfielder for the league-leading National City Dukes in the San Diego Adult Baseball League. Fall 2004 he started up with his Sinematic Bodies: Intro to Lit and Film circus (which featured, among other things, a mad dash across campus by mimes (chapeau Antonioni) and started overseeing the production of cultural studies tomes with Harry Polkinhorn for Hyperbole Books--touted by the one and only, notorious and untoward Playboy Magazine as one of the reasons SDSU won best "party school" in 2005. Spring 2005 saw the startup of his Freud's Bastard Children class and the Literature After Derrida lecture series. Fall 2005 saw Nericcio lead a graduate seminar on his fallen guru Jacques Derrida (Chasing Derrida) and teach a comedy seminar (Naked, Loud, & Broken) in honor of his mentor, Richard Simon. 2006 was filled with flights of sinemadness with Michael Powell and Walker Percy; frolics in the imperial bedroom, with James Joyce, Homer and Carlos Fuentes; prowls down the alleyways of film noir and pulp fiction with Orson Welles and Quentin Tarantino; and ended explosively with seductive hallucinations with a 500 student introduction to literature delirium in Wiik Auditorium.

Original cover proposal, Tex[t]-Mex

2007 began with a bang as Nericcio finally finished his 16-years-in-the-making magnum opus for the University of Texas Press, Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America--it appeared January 15, 2007. Since 2007 and into 2008, the Laredo ex-patriot has been spotted at Oberlin College, Purdue University, USC, Los Angeles's Skylight Books, The Universty of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas, San Antonio, and the University of San Diego hawking his wares and generally trying to invoke academic mischief. In October 2010, Nericcio invaded Ohio State University for a lecture and book-signing; Janurary 2011 found him hanging with donkeys in Santa Monica while March was spent talking about televisual psyches at the University of Michigan and April sped by with Nericcio talking space and Mextasy at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Latest rumors center around the existence of some character named Guillermo Nericcio García and an traveling art show named "Mextasy" and "Xicanoholic"--but reliable sources for these shadowy whispers are proving hard to find.

Indulgent visitors to this page waiting for hell to freeze-over can peek at online syllabi from Nericcio's collection of past courses or sample this alternative index of WWWeb-based mischief where many of his essays are available in Adobe's ubiquitous pdf format. Also available are two illustrated fragments from his theoretical memoir on the US/Mexico border: "Re-membering Laredo" and "Almost Like Laredo"; book reviews of Charles Bukowski's finale Pulp, Rudolfo Anaya's new age weeper Jalamanta, and Richard Rodriguez's bizarre smash bestseller Days of Obligation (these pieces originally appeared in World Literature Today);an illustrated transcript of Nericcio's Museum of Photographic Art introduction to Pull my Daisy (a collaborative oddity by Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg); and lastly, a scathing send-up of Ray Bradbury's, Edward James Olmos's and Disney's cine-chimera, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.

Lastly (for the poor, misbegotten soul who has scrolled this far down the page!), do please click below to view the birth of Nericcio's efforts as a Ford Focus Spanish-language voiceover star and would-be commercial actor--directed by Print Magazine superstar Sean Desmond. Or, alternatively, click this link to see a San Diego City Beat story for which Nericcio SWEARS he did not pay or another yellow press wonder that documents the trials and tribulations of teaching 500 student classes at SDSU.

Ford Focus Commercial | Student Film from Mextasy on Vimeo.
Me and Sean Desmond and his crew got together in 2009 to film this student film/commercial. One of the best shoots ever!

Lastly, there's more information, here, from wikipedia.

Also, some links to my published works:

    

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Short Biographical Note: William Anthony Nericcio | BIO

A notorious Mexican-American public intellectual, artist, and troublemaker, William Nericcio was born in the fabled "Streets of Laredo," Texas, or at Mercy Hospital, at any rate, in 1961. For thirteen years he labored under the watchful, at times sinister, eyes of sisters, brothers, and priests at Blessed Sacrament Elementary and St. Augustine High School--no doubt this contributes to the rumors that he was "raised by nuns" that makes its way around "the internets." With an undergraduate degree in English honors from the University of Texas at Austin, and MA/PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University, Nericcio now works as the Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University--these postings followed a stint as an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut from 1988 to 1991 after his years freezing in Ithaca, New York (it also follows on his years as a bartender in Austin, Texas at the famous Cactus Cafe and defunct Texas Tavern cantinas).

Nericcio is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles in journals including Camera Obscura, Americas Review, Spring, the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, and Mosaic. In 2007, The University of Texas Press published his American Library Association award-winning cultural studies volume Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America. His next book, Eyegiene: Mutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race, should make its way to readers in late 2012. He is also the author of two edited collections (Homer from Salinas: John Steinbeck's Enduring Voice for California and The Hurt Business: Oliver Mayer's Early Works [+] PLUS) for San Diego State University Press. Most recently, he assisted philosopher Mark Richard Wheeler with his critical anthology, 150 Years of Evolution: Darwin's Impact on Contemporary Thought and Culture, also for SDSU Press.

Beware San Diego and Tijuana! MEXTASY! Invading the Centro Cultural de la Raza from September 1 thru 10, 2011; Gala Fiesta, CHICANOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, is THURSDAY, Sept 8 featuring Josh Kun, Gustavo Arellano, y LOS HOLLYWOOD!!!

Click to make mucho more grande!

Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious is a traveling stereotype {freak show/art exhibit} based on the work of William "Memo" Nericcio and Guillermo Nericcio García--it has previously toured appearing in the august hallways of the American Studies Program, Ann Arbor, Michigan (University of Michigan); San Ysidro, California (as Xicanoholic) at theFront, Casa Familiar; McAllen, Texas at South Texas College's Pecan campus Art Gallery; Laredo, Texas at the the Laredo Center of the Arts; at the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa (April 8, 2011); and, most recently, at the Fullerton Public Library!

Mextasy both reflects and expands upon Nericcio's 2007 book with UT Press, Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the Mexican in America. In addition to racist artifacts from American mass culture (the bread and butter of Uncle Sam's unconscious), the show also features works that are "xicanosmotic," that is, works by Mexican-American artists where the delicious tattoo of the Mexican/US frontera is writ large as in the deliriously compelling semiotic tracings of Perry Vasquez, Izel Vargas, and Marisela Norte.

Mextasy was originally curated by South Texas College (STC) Art and Art History Professor Rachael Freyman Brown, with the assistance of Amanda Alejos (not to mention the meddling of the artist, Guillermo Nericcio García). The Centro Cultural de la Raza show as well as the San Antonio show are curated by Eduardo Santacruz Cortez, Eddie Vasquez, and Brenda Lozano and produced with the assistance of the Centro (especially Ozzie Monge y Brent Beltran).

The Centro Cultural de la Raza will have a FIESTA GALA entitled CHICANOHOLICS ANONYMOUS the night of Thursday, September 8, 2011! Expect a night of delirious surprises with Gustavo Arellano of ASK A MEXICAN fame hanging out and reading pieces from his new book (and fielding questions!????); Josh Kun, wizard music/cultural studies maven (the author of AUDIOTOPIA) reading from new works; Bill "Memo" Nericcio harassing the audience with passages from TEX{T}-Mex, and, closing the night, a live acoustic set by LOS HOLLYWOOD. More to come!    

Video teasers? of course....


Gustavo Arellano on the COLBERT REPORT

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Gustavo Arellano
www.colbertnation.com
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Josh Kun with OZOMATLI

y LOS HOLLYWOOD

Come to the Gala!

Space, Place, and the Production of Knowledge | A Conference at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa | April 8th and 9th, 2011

This posting covers the American Studies lecture at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa; for info on the Mextasy presentation go here.

I am very excited to be jetting west over the Pacific in April to keynote a conference called Space, Place, and the Production of Knowledge, at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa, (April 8th and 9th, 2011).


The presentation there derives from the introduction and internal chapters of Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race.... 


Here's the new working title:

The cultural space of Hawai'i was burned into my synapses as a child growing up in Laredo, Texas--they were etched there by KGNS Television, Channel 8, an NBC (now NBCUniversal) affiliate.  This station owned two or three prints of Warner Brothers' cartoons that they played over and over and over again.  Somehow me and my sister Josie never got tired of Wackiki Wabbit, below, and Racketeer Rabbit.

In Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America, I try to document how these Hollywood-borne versions of Mexicans (Speedy Gonzales, Charlton Heston as Miguel Vargas in Touch of Evil, etc) proxy for "real" Mexicans in the here and now--infecting viewers of these "innocent" entertainments with seductive hallucinations of "alien" subjectivities that resonate through the psyche forever.


In coming to Hawai'i, I want to advance the critical methodology developed in Tex[t]-Mex and apply it to "exotic" space of these heralded Pacific Islands.


That's part of the talk, the centerpiece of which will include a public screening of the aforementioned Wackiki Rabbit, directed by Chuck Jones in 1943:

The other part of my talk will address the focus of this special conference: Space, Place, and the Production of Knowledge. I just got finished revising an essay on Laredo, Texas, bordertown, as the geocultural space that gave birth to the postmodern.  Really!

Myriam Gurba

So the balance of my talk will look at writers, thinkers, painters, and performers who allow the particular and peculiar resonances of their geography, of their cartography, of their geo-psycho-carto-zeitgeist to "color" their work.  Examples include Algeria and France refracting the work of Jacques Derrida, the lower Rio Grande Valley infecting the work of painter Izel Vargas, maybe New York in the work of Jon Stewart, 

My guru! Jacques Derrida

Long Beach, California in the short stories of Myriam Gurba, and Laredo warping the mind of yours truly.


{dig Gurba's take on cultural spaces here...}

I really looking forward to working with the cool graduate student and faculty cohorts at the University of Hawai'i, at Manoa.   Aloha!