Ana Amado

Ana Amado (11 May 1946 – 9 November 2016) was an Argentine journalist, filmmaker, academic and feminist. In Mexico while in exile, she produced films under the name Cristina Benítez. Amado grew up in rural Argentina and, after training to be a teacher, earned a degree in political science from the Catholic University of Santiago del Estero. During her schooling, she began to work as a television news producer and print journalist. Orphaned when she was young, she moved to Buenos Aires after her graduation and worked for several different television news stations. Traveling abroad with her job, she interviewed subjects like Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi. Because of her support for the leftist Montoneros radicals, she became a target of the Triple A terrorist squads in 1974. Her boyfriend was also targeted, causing the couple to marry and go into exile.

Amado went to Caracas, Venezuela, where she made films and commercials for the Ministry of Culture for two years. In 1976, the couple moved to Mexico City, where she wrote for various newspapers, contributed to several magazines as a film critic, presented news for multiple television stations, and created documentary films. She also worked as a professor at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM, Autonomous Metropolitan University) and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM, National Autonomous University of Mexico), while continuing her graduate courses. Coming into contact with feminists, she conducted research on indigenous women at the (ILET, Latin American Institute for Transnational Studies) and prepared her thesis. The potential for the election of 1983 to result in a return to democracy in Argentina led the couple to return home that year.

On her return, Amado submitted her thesis to the University of Buenos Aires, but its approval was delayed until her advisor returned from exile. Initially she worked as a journalist but was hired to head ILET's women and society department between 1987 and 1990. Employed as an assistant professor in the faculty of philosophy and letters at the University of Buenos Aires in 1990, she later served three terms as chair of film analysis and film criticism in the arts department. In 1992, she joined with other women academics to found a women's studies curriculum and the journal ''Mora''. Five years later, the program became the (Interdisciplinary Institute of Gender Studies) at the University of Buenos Aires. In 2008, she earned her PhD from Leiden University and continued to teach in Argentina and abroad until 2015. Amado died in 2016 and is remembered for her works analyzing Argentine history and as one of the founders of the field of gender studies in Argentina. Provided by Wikipedia