Julia Andres (University Bielefeld)

Transcripción

1 Julia Andres (University Bielefeld) La Quinceañera: Rite of Passage or Escapism into Barbieland? In 2006 Dominican-American writer Julia Alvarez set out to explore a supposedly ancient Latino/-a ritual, which she herself never experienced: the Quinceañera. The fifteenth birthday of a daughter marks her entering adulthood and is often celebrated in such a lavish, highly stylized manner that Latino families throw the house out of the window as Alvarez puts it, referring to a Spanish saying. The immense costs of these events, which present the girl symbolically as a woman in public for the first time, exceed many families means but they nevertheless insist on giving one for their offspring. The importance of this piece of old world tradition seems even more pronounced with Latinos living in the US in the second or third generation with hardly any other ties to homeland culture. Even more intriguing, however, is that the potential glamour of the quince depending on the affluence of the hosting family is particularly appealing to Anglo-American teenage girls, too. Sweet Sixteen and La Quinceañera appear to have fused into a vision of opulence, upstaging a teenage princess with no concern left for any uncanny repercussions: the bridal gown worn by the quinceañera or the token doll and high heels as gifts for an adolescent female. The ritual is often accepted uncritically in order to have a party más epic as Michele Serros lets her teenage heroine Evie judge her own sixteeñera party ( Scandalosa! 32). Using Alvarez partly autobiographical study Once upon a Quinceañera and Serros Young Adult narrative Scandalosa! for my paper, I intend to contrast attitudes towards La Quinceañera in the USA today and to discuss the question whether this is a very visible outcome of cultural spheres in contact: Anglo and Latino, working and upper classes, tradition and popular culture. Franziska Böhme (University Leipzig) Of Victims, Villains, and Heroes: The Dominant Sex Trafficking Discourse in Trade Starting in the 1980s, human trafficking has entered the public limelight and political agendas around the world as is evidenced by soaring numbers of publications and the growing awareness of international organizations. While human trafficking occurs in various sectors of the unregulated economy, most essays, books, and antitrafficking campaigns have been preoccupied with sex trafficking the illegal transport of humans across national borders for the purpose of forced prostitution. It has stirred up a veritable hysteria due to its connection with highly politicized topics and concepts, such as border security and national sovereignty, prostitution, and gender.

2 However, almost no research has hitherto been carried out on how popular culture engages in and adds to this discourse. This research lacuna needs to be addressed, given popular culture s potential role in institutionalizing a specific language or understanding of a topic. In an attempt to fill this void, my presentation will argue that the 2006 movie Trade largely works as an affirmation of wide-spread popular beliefs about sex trafficking. I base my analysis on critical feminist scholarship, which has disparaged the dominant abolitionist discourse for victimizing female migrants, demonizing traffickers, and glorifying rescuers. While this discourse largely ignores scientific evidence on migration and prostitution, it still dominates literary and cinematic representations of sex trafficking. In Trade, sex trafficking is approached through the two-pronged fictional story of two trafficked females and the quest of two men to save them. Critical feminist literature alleges that many assumptions of the dominant sex trafficking discourse are cultural myths. To reach conclusions about Trade s discursive value, I will take a close look at its depiction of the trafficking process, the characters, as well as their agency. Through analyzing the portrayal of the various character groups in the movie victims, villains, and heroes I want to evaluate whether Trade is another example of texts perpetuating a certain mythology of human trafficking, how this influences the agency attributed to both women and men in the film, as well as what implications this might entail for the dichotomy of a global South v. a global North. By contrasting female innocence and passiveness against male activeness, Trade applies the innocent victim model and approaches sex trafficking from an angle largely compliant with the views of abolitionist feminists. Not only agency is divided across gender lines: The global South also functions as an uncivilized Other to a global North where the rule of law and Culture seem to prevail. The movie thus sets up Manichean notions of good v. evil and active v. passive, and while this undoubtedly makes for a compelling narrative, the movie s sensationalist depiction risks to perpetuate the dominant sex trafficking discourse. My paper thus presents a rare case study of popular culture s treatment of sex trafficking and contributes to understanding the continuing predominance of sex trafficking within the public realm. Luisa Raquel Ellermeier (Lima Universidad de Bielefeld) Re-interpretando la identidad de los niños del país ajeno. Etnicidad, niñez excluída y Borderlands en la sierra rural peruana El ensayo postula la posibilidad de encontrar en la teoría de Borderlands de Gloria Anzaldúa una estrategia viable para la población excluída y marginada de la sierra rural peruana, que les permita re-interpretar la propia identidad desde una perspectiva emancipadora y reivindicativa. Asimismo, se enfatiza la importancia de involucrar a la población infantil de dichos grupos en este proceso, dado que constituyen las víctimas de la inequidad social más vulnerables y necesitadas y, a su

3 vez, son los únicos que pueden dar continuidad a toda transformación social surgida a partir de la re-interpretación de sus propios antecedentes y de la realidad que les corresponde afrontar. Esta población excluída constituiría un país ajeno al país oficial, una nación percibida como no perteneciente, o peor aún, como no existente por los centros de poder político, económico y simbólico peruanos. Su virtual no-existencia (como ciudadanos ni como personas) en el imaginario colectivo de los peruanos sería el resultado de la identidad nacional oficial, que sigue una lógica homogeneizadora e inclusive etnocida en su afán por lograr la integración a partir de la negación de lo indígena. Se hace uso de data empírica que demuestra la exclusión socioeconómica estructural de la población rural de la sierra; así como de factores históricos y sociales que constituyen las raíces del pensamiento colonial aún vigente en el Perú; para fundamentar la necesidad y pertinencia de aplicar la teoría de Borderlands en una reflexión explícitamente decolonizadora, en la cual se persigue alcanzar una nueva conciencia (mestiza) en términos de Anzaldúa para los niños que habitan dichas Borderlands. Diana Fulger (University Bielefeld) Bridging the gap generations of Cuban exile writers in the United States Over the past fifty years, the Cuban Revolution has generated several waves of exile writers in the United States. Critic Gustavo Pérez Firmat divides the Cuban-American literary Diaspora into three groups. In his book, Life on the Hyphen, he speaks about the different generations of Cuban-American writers, according to the age at which they emigrated to the United States: first generation left Cuba as adults, second generation writers were born in the United States and the so-called one and a half generation left Cuba as children, or as adolescents, thus carrying with them a double cultural baggage, at the same time both Cuban and American. This theory has influenced the majority of contemporary critics of Cuban-American literature, both within and outside the United States (e.g. Isabel Alvarez Borland, José Manuel García and Wolfgang Karrer, to name just a few). All three generations differ in their style of writing, as far as tone and attitude towards Cuba are concerned. My interest falls particularly on the one and a half generation of writers. Given that such a hyphenated generation exists, it sets itself apart from the first generation of exile writers, who mostly mourned Cuba s pre-revolutionary past. The one and a half generation depicts the tensions between the characters idealized past in Cuba and their bleak present (Borland 97). Acknowledged contemporary Cuban-American authors such as Ana Menéndez, Ernesto Mestre and Achy Obejas, who belong to the hyphenated generation, address the issue of conflicting perspectives regarding a Cuban-American identity within exiled families. As Ms Obejas herself confesses in an interview I conducted with her in March 2010: It makes sense to me that people exiled as adults would be nostalgic for the life they had and might have had; I begrudge no one their nostalgia or melancholia. It also makes sense that we 1.5ers

4 would not share it, and that we d be engaged in our present lives much more, even if we look back on occasion. I think what makes me different, and hopefully makes my writing different, is that my Cuba is not in the past. My Cuba s in my present. Astrid Haas (University Bielefeld) Lone Star Vistas: Constructions of Texas in Mexican, German, and U.S.-American Travel Narratives, Both description of an outside world and occasion for inner reflections, both representation of an other and articulation of notions of the self, travel narratives offer a unique insight into conceptualizations of territories and communities. Through their depiction of sites and societies of otherness for audiences from and located back home, and through their referring back and forth between the two locations and communities of their concern, travelogues have been particularly formative for constructing notions of social identities as well as social and geographic spaces. The presentation will outline a research project on the narrative constructions of Texas as a geographic and social space and of Texan ethnic, regional, and national identities in the context of the region s changing national status from During these 40 years, Texas moved from being a province of the newly-formed Mexican Republic via a phase of independence to becoming a Southern (i.e. slaveholding) as well as Western (i.e. frontier/border) state in the antebellum United States. While the region had had a sparse, mostly Mexican and Amerindian population during the Spanish colonial period, it became a true (transfrontera) contact zone (J.D. Saldívar, Mary Louise Pratt) of inter- and transcultural interaction among a host of ethnic groups Mexicans, Amerindians, Blacks, Anglo-Americans, and European (especially German) immigrants during the period examined. The general introduction to the research project will be followed by an exemplary analysis of one of the earliest travelogues from the corpus of texts to be studied, the Mexican politician Lorenzo de Zavala s Viage de los Estados Undos del Norte America (1834), and the way it discusses Texas in the context of its proto-tocquevillean political analysis of the United States. Maria Eleonora Hebisz (Universidad de Lodz) Movimientos para la educación multicultural como un ejemplo de comunidad Huancavelica y Ayacucho en el Perú las regiones y la Península de Copacabana en Bolivia La educación oficial en el Perú y Bolivia está fuertemente ligada a la política y el contexto socio-étnico en el que se desarrolla. Las escuelas del Estado incluyen en el

5 diseño y en el control de los discursos pedagógicos dos alternativas. Por un lado se intenta tratar de la misma manera las lenguas indígenas y el español, por sobre los programas de educación bilingüe. Por otra parte se incluyen conceptos, multiétnicos en la educación para la población indígena, conceptos que quedan en el espacio de lo virtual y lo abstracto que no se reflejan en la realidad. Perú y Bolivia han desarrollado programas relacionados con la educación multilingüe y multicultural, pero esto, en la práctica no ha cambiado la situación de los pueblos indígenas debido a que los aymara y los quechuas continúan utilizando su propio idioma. El objetivo de los gobiernos ha sido promover la integración cultural, pero esto en la práctica entra en contradicción con la idea de una educación multicultural. Al mismo tiempo, tanto en Perú como en Bolivia, vemos el surgimiento del poder local, de representantes de las regiones indígenas, de la cultura indígena y tradicional, donde una de las ideas es de luchar por sus derechos; es poner en práctica sus propios cambios en la educación multicultural y multilinguismo. Es más, con el desarrollo del resurgimiento de lo étnico en muchos países de América Latina comienzan a surgir universidades indígenas. Esto está también en Perú y Bolivia, donde los intelectuales indígenas desean desarrollar la formación en consonancia con el espíritu de los valores indígenas y no están conectados con la idea de la educación post-colonial. Entonces cabe preguntarse si; La educación multicultural tiene la posibilidad de aplicarse y desarrollarse entre los pueblos indígenas de Perú y Bolivia?, Qué importancia tiene esto para el movimientos de los pueblos indígenas en esta zona?, En los programas para la educación multicultural se consideran las comunidades de Perú y Bolivia como entidades y las diferencias culturales existentes entre ellas?. Estas preguntas trataremos de responder mediante la presentación de los resultados de un trabajo de campo, que hemos realizado en dicha zona. Saskia Hertlein (Catholic Univ. Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) Crossing Inter-American Borders in Luis Alberto Urrea s Into the Beautiful North In my paper, I would like to present Luis Alberto Urrea s latest novel Into the Beautiful North as a literary example for crossing inter-american borders. The novel aims at connecting Mexican and US-American readers not only by having young people travel from Mexico to the USA and back, but also by referring to a variety of cultural and cross-cultural references from both sides of the border. In the novel, the young Mexican protagonists inspired by the movie The Magnificent Seven - decide to cross the border illegally in order to bring back their own Siete Magníficos. Their aim is to save their almost man-less village from nasty drug dealers. On their way, they meet with a large variety of people and are faced with both expected and unexpected challenges. By these situations, they and the reader are asked to question their ideas about a multitude of Mexican, US-American, and Inter-American issues.

6 Urrea crosses borders in his writing as well. In many parts of the book, his personal experience (for example working in the Tijuana garbage dump), the facts from his non-fictional writing (e.g. The Devil s Highway about Mexicans trying to cross the border to Arizona illegally) as well as him being an artist are visible. Also, he deliberately reverses a lot of common topics, issues, and writing styles in order to confront a multitude of readers with their (sometimes maybe even unnoticed stereotypical) perspectives. Additionally, the book was translated into Spanish right away in order to be available for readers on both sides of the border. These aspects make the novel especially interesting for scholars from various disciplines who are concerned with Inter-American Studies. Therefore, it would be interesting to discuss it at the conference. Luz Angélica Kirschner (University Bielefeld) Samba Dreamers: Brazuca Literature and Questions of Identity and Belonging Kathleen de Azevedo s Samba Dreamers, 2006, is the first Brazilian American novel published in English in the U.S.A. Azevedo s work displays Joe Silvas s immigrant experience and narrates the troubled life of the character Rosea Socorro Katz, the daughter of the deceased Brazilian performer Carmen Socorro, who evidently brings to mind Carmen Miranda ( ), the legendary Hollywood superstar of the Good Neighbor period. This essay suggests that by fictionally negotiating between, what Ana Y. Ramos Zayas has called, Brazilian cultural excess and invisibility within the U.S. American context, de Azevedo attempts to work through the traumatic Hollywood experience of Carmen Miranda, the queen of quintessential female Latinidad and Tropicalness, and its subsequent ambivalent impact on Brazilian identity in the U.S. diaspora. Further, this paper argues that despite de Azevedo s sophisticated engagement with Miranda s legacy ultimately her attempt to open a space for a Brazilian American identity remains precarious: Rosea dies, Joe returns to Brazil. Finally, this essay situates de Azevedo s ambivalent novel within the historical contexts of Other first generation Latino/a writers such as Angie Cruz, Ariel Dorfman, Demetria Martínez, Hector Tobar, Jaime Manrique, and Silvana Paternostro. Dorota Klewer (Universidad de Lodz) La identidad femenina en Chile: desde el golpe de Estado hasta Michelle Bachelet La ponencia tratará de la identidad femenina moderna en Chile, un país donde las mujeres, aunque constituyen más de la mitad de la población, no tuvieron hasta

7 hace poco los mismos derechos y el mismo estado legal que sus maridos y padres, siendo también subrepresentadas en la política lo que hizo de ellas una verdadera minoría social. Seguiré la construcción de la identidad de género en lo privado y lo público, desde el golpe de Estado de 1973 hasta hoy en día, siempre buscando un punto de vista inter- e intracultural: al lado de mis estudios y las de los investigadores internacionales aparecerán las opiniones de las chilenas mismas. Explicando por qué este es un periodo crucial, pondré hincapié en la influencia de la dictadura del gen. Pinochet en la sociedad y en el reforzamiento de sus tendencias conservadoras, junto con el estereotipo, según el cual las mujeres pertenecen al ámbito privado y sólo los varones tienen capacidad para ocupar la esfera pública. Mencionaré primeras movilizaciones femeninas luchando contra la dictadura y por los derechos humanos, describiendo el significado del advenimiento de la democracia: destructivo para estos movimientos y positivo para el diálogo transnacional con las feministas europeas, norteamericanas y argentinas. Subrayaré la divergencia entre las nuevas imagenes de la mujer y la ley chilena que comenzó a cambiar solamente tras la debilitación de la influencia pinochetista al principio del s. XXI. En esta situación destacará la elección de una mujer al cargo de Presidente en Chile: a pesar de que Michelle Bachelet no basó su campaña electoral en cuestiones de género, más de 53% de mujeres votaron por ella. Será la señal de una unificación femenina en Chile? Intentaré poner unas hipótesis relacionadas con el significado del gobierno de Bachelet para la forja de la identidad femenina chilena y propondré unas especulaciones para su futuro desarrollo. Zuzanna Kowalczyk (Universidad de Lodz) Costa Rica y el Tratado de Libre Comercio con Estados Unidos En la ponencia voy a presentar los controversias que tenían lugar en Costa Rica en torno a la firma del Tratado de Libre Comercio con Estados Unidos. La crisis económica de los finales de años 70. y las medidas del ajuste tomadas por los gobiernos siquientes para aplacar sus efectos negativos, la reforma estructural de la sociedad costarricense: tanto en la dimensión de los procesos de privatización como en la liberalización economica, precedieron el proceso de negociación y de ratificación del tratado. La resistencia social frente a la liberalización económica en los años 80. y 90. y ante los planes de privatización del sector de la energía y telecomunicaciones al principio del siglo XXI, no constituyeron la mejor base para la aceptación del Tratado. Los principios del siglo XXI llevaron también protestas en la dimensión global: la sociedad costarriqueña teniendo miedo a la influencia de las consecuencias de tal acuerdo sobre el empeoramiento de la situación de existencia de algunos sectores sociales en el país, manifestó en contra de la firma del Tratdo. La resistencia social finalizó en la decisión del gobierno sobre la convocación del referéndum. Los ciudadanos tuvieron que pronunciarse a favor o en contra de la aceptación del

8 Tratado. Comenzó bastante tempestuosa campaña de los partidarios y los adversarios de la aprobación del Tratado, que se terminó finalmente en el éxito de los que apoyaron el libre comercio entre América Central y Estados Unidos. El 7 de octubre de 2007 más de 50 por ciento de los participantes del referédum se pronuniaron a la adhesión al convenio. Qué efectos tuvo la resistencia social ante el Tratado de Libre Comercio? Las protestas representaron un nuevo paso hacia la consolidación de la sociedad ciudadana? Hasta qué grado las disposiciones del Tratado fueron implementados y qué efectos sociales, económicos y políticos dicha implementación ha llevado? Estos son las preguntas a los que quería dar respuesta en mi ponencia. Catherine.M. Leen (National University of Ireland Maynooth) Eat, Drink, Hombre, Mujer: Translating Minority Film. María Ripoll s precursor to the feminist Chicana hit Real Women Have Curves provides an interesting example of transnational or transcultural exchange in Chicana film. Exchanges between Chicanas and other women of colour have long been evidenced in the literary sphere through the publication of seminal collections such as This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color and Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras, which compiled writings by women of different ethnic backgrounds. Tortilla Soup (2001), a remake of Ang Lee s Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (1994), transfers this type of exchange to film. This paper explores the ways in which Tortilla Soup translates the story of a Taiwanese family and their gender and intergenerational conflicts to a Hispanic milieu. It also questions whether the result is a generic remake or a work whose articulation of multiple identities is enriched by transnational exchange. Niamh Mc Namara (University College Cork) Mothers Whores and Gods: Problematizing the threat of sexual deviance by re/inventing tradition through native beliefs Traditional constructs of the Chicano familia, have become subject to a fervent attack within contemporary Chicana narratives, particularly lesbian narratives, in response to the supressive patriarchal powers perceived to be hindering rather than aiding in the formation of a cohesive Chicano community. The typically maledominated family unit is confronted, questioned, and reconfigured in an attempt to highlight social and cultural discrepancies within a culture who places a central importance on familia, yet uses a heteronormative patriarchal structure whose very

9 design isolates and separates distinct members of society regardless of familial relations. In order to escape the stigma of traitor - culturally aligned to the historical figure of La Malinche - lesbian writers often write from within their own cultural mythology and folklore. Through the use of the virgin/whore paradigm (La Virgin de Guadalupe and La Malinche) as well as the spectral figure of La Llorona, writers such as Felicia Luna Lemus and Cherrie Moraga revisit, review and rewrite the relationship Chicanas have with these patriarchal female archetypes designated to them by their Chicano counterparts. Engaging with recent historical research as well as cultural and gender theory, Chicana lesbians refute certain social constructs proposed by Mexican and Chicano men, including Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz, who seek to perpetuate the myth of woman as submissive through miscontrued interpretations of the historical past together with Catholic doctrine and iconography. Harking back to pre-colonial Aztec society, writers such as Cherrie Moraga pursue direct investigations of a mescla of Catholic iconography and Aztec deities. I wish to show that instead of reinforcing the difference between cultures, the infusion of two opposing religions both in the writings of Cherrie Moraga and Felicia Luna Lemus can be seen as a reflection of the mestizaje as described by Gloria Anzaldua, and an attempt to portray a hybrid collective rather than the divided and fractured whole which appears through the heteronormative patriarchal social structures of Chicano culture. Niamh Mc Namara is a second year PhD student from University College Cork, Ireland whose research centres on the use of female archetypes and mythology in Chicana lesbian texts. She teaches an introductary course to Chicano literature in UCC to undergraduate students and is an active member of the Centre for Mexican Studies located in the Hispanic Studies department there. Daniela Opitz, M.A. (University Bielefeld) Recordando la militancia de mujeres argentinas en películas documentales Objetividad vs. afectividad A partir de mediados de los años noventa la militancia socio-política de los años sesenta y setenta se ha convertido en uno de los temas principales de la cultura de memoria(s) en Argentina. Las películas documentales Montoneros, una historia (Andrés di Tella, 1994) y Cazadores de utopías (David Blaustein, 1994) se pueden considerar como un puntapié inicial en este contexto y hasta el día de hoy películas documentales como El tiempo y la sangre (Alejandra Almirón, 2004), Errepé (Gabriel Corvi y Gustavo de Jesús, 2004) o Norma Arrostito. Gaby, la montonera (César D Angiolillo, 2008) siguen enfocando el tema de la militancia setentista en Argentina. En nuestra ponencia nos proponemos enfocar la representación fílmica de la militancia de mujeres en esas películas. Las mujeres formando parte de organizaciones político-militares que en sus métodos incluían la lucha armada que, a su vez, implicaba la muerte de los adversarios rompen con el papel de género que

10 se les atribuye por lo general: ser portadora de vida. Consideramos que los filmes que de alguna manera tienen que dar cuenta de esa discrepancia oscilan entre dos polos: por un lado los discurso*s+ de la sobriedad que aspiran a una representación objetiva (Nichols 1991) y, por el otro, formas de representación subjetivas que pretenden despertar la empatía del espectador. Nuestra meta consiste en dilucidar cómo las películas documentales arriba mencionadas se mueven entre estos dos polos de presunta objetividad y afectividad y qué consecuencias trae consigo para la representación fílmica de la militancia de mujeres. Melanie Pooch (University of Mannheim) Transculturality, Transculturation, and the Transcultural Novel Transculturality is an emergent cultural studies issue in a globalizing world. The term can be traced back to the 1940s and Fernando Ortiz s definition of transculturation. The Cuban sociologist aimed at describing the mutual cultural influence between colonizer and colonized which goes beyond one-directional concepts such as acculturation and deculturation. Wolfgang Welsch s more recent notion of transculturality represents the next step towards a new concept of a global transcultural identity, in which complex multidirectional cultural flows have the potential to transgress rigid national or ethnic boundaries and categorizations. As transculturality has widely remained a theoretical construct, the main goal of the paper is to describe and classify the genre of the transcultural novel. The predominantly Latin American discourse of narrative transculturation constitutes the theory s link to literature. The Uruguayan Angel Rama s idea that writers function as so-called transculturadores who mediate between different cultural influences and the Peruvian Julio Ortega s claim that literature is always intrinsically heterogeneous, are constructive tools for the description of a transcultural novel. Thus, literary aspects resulting from different cultural inspirations and tensions, such as multivocality or transculturality, can be identified. By analyzing and interpreting the structure and content of the prototypical transcultural American work of fiction Tropic of Orange, a first description of the transcultural novel will be made. The Japanese American author Karen Tei Yamashita conveys the diversity of Los Angeles transcultural identities on numerous levels and from multiple perspectives. The egalitarian structure of the novel, the polyglot, as well as the individually tailored narrative voice of each of her characters transcend the formerly established classifications of literary genres. With her blend of seven protagonists whose identities transgress having one or two specifically assigned ethnicities, Yamashita creates a global third space in and beyond the cultural nodal point of Los Angeles and the neighboring Mexican-American borderlands in which transcultural identities are constantly negotiated. My paper will show why the meaning of American multicultural literature is altered by adding a transcultural approach to the traditional intercultural and intracultural

11 studies. A global, transcultural perspective is characterized by a non-hierarchical structure and mixture of genres, narrative voices, languages, and characters. The nature of this (trans)cultural phenomenon rewrites the meaning of multiculturalism, provides the framework for the definition of the transcultural novel, and offers a new understanding of American literary and cultural studies in a globalizing world. Margarita Ramos Godínez (Universidad de Guadalajahra) Co mida, poder, alternancia de códigos y género en CARAMELO En su historia, las mujeres méxico-americanas han sufrido una doble discriminación: la de ser méxico-americanas viviendo en Estados Unidos y la de ser mujeres dentro del mismo grupo de méxico-americanos. Con respecto a esto, González-Berry (1995) expresa que, mediante la escritura, las autoras chicanas han tratado de tomar conciencia y de concientizar a sus lectores de que se necesita cambiar la manera en que se les ha percibido como mujeres y como chicanas. Ejemplo de ello es la escritora chicana Sandra Cisneros que, en su novela Caramelo (2002), cuenta con tres personajes femeninos que al hablar de comida y alternar códigos (Myers- Scotton, 1993) expresan cómo se ha ejercido poder sobre ellas, cómo ellas han ejercido poder sobre otras mujeres y cómo pueden minimizar o, de ser preciso, detener ese ejercicio de poder. En conclusión, todos los escritores, pero en este caso los chicanos-miembros de un tercer espacio-tienen la obligación de romper estructuras de poder a través de la función estética y creativa de la lengua. Allá ajüera I wanna be out there The group of Mexican-Americans is complex in the sense that history, geography, migration, economy, language; among other factors, have affected the way their community was formed. Moore, Joan (1970); Bruce-Novoa (1990) and Silva-Corvalán (1994). In Allá ajüera, a poem written by Alurista (1971), mother and son have a conversation. We will see how Alurista uses language, code-switching and levels of language to recreate the feelings of these two characters towards the anglo world that exercises power over them who, at the same time, represent the group of chicanos during the late 60 s in U.S.A. and who would have liked to be out there doing the same things anglo people did: go to school, speak without feeling ashamed of their language, etc. Annette Rukwied (University Bielefeld) Chican@," "Latin@": What's in the Name? New Perspectives for U.S. Latin@ Film Festivals U.S. Latino film festivals have been around since the mid-1970s, with San Antonio s Cine Festival being the oldest. As a form of cultural activism (Ginsburg), in resistance to Hollywood s stereotypical representations of ethnic minorities, and fueled by the

12 ethno-nationalism of the 1970s and early 1980s, these veteran festivals initially sought to target an audience of their peers la Raza (the Mexican American minority), even as they endeavoured to prove showcasing opportunities for emerging independent ethnic film producers. Today s festivals, while still prioritizing the presentations of the realities of America s fastest growing minority, and the exhibition of Latin@ film, have for the most part shifted from using the more politically charged Chican@ to the broader Latin@ (which would include all persons, U.S. residents and/or citizens, of Latin American background) as a term of self-designation. In this paper, I argue that this change in terminology is more than just a short-lived fad but in fact a strategic move. Contemporary Latin@ film festivals, in times of economic crisis and dwindling institutional support, and as part of an presumably colorblind society (invoked in particular by those questioning the value and legitimacy of corrective social policies such as affirmative action), must find new ways of creating alliances that will sustain them and their missions. As Olivia Cadaval has noted, culturally themed festivals subscribe to a performance of culture and thus furnish an arena where minority audiences may examine themselves and exhibit their culture/s to others. Drawing on this observation, I argue that all festivals under discussion propagate a notion of latinidad that is hemispheric (Noriega); a notion that has not only been with Latin@ but also Chican@ festivals from their inception but has now come full circle. Furthermore, I want to look at how such Latino festivals may use said attribute as a cultural resource (Yúdice) and marketing tool (Dávila), denoting identities that are relational and non-essentialist (Hall). My paper draws on fieldwork conducted in the fall of 2009 and in the spring of 2010, centering on the festival scenes in three Californian urban regions, San Diego, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area. With special regard to San Diego s Latino Film Festival, and including film material and interviews with informants such as programmers, visitors, volunteers, and sponsors, I will cast a critical eye on the many ways these festivals project such transnational latinidad. Anne-Marie Scholz (University Bremen) Transnational American Studies and German-American Studies: The Case of Stanley Kramer s Ship of Fools (1965) Scholars in the field of German-American Studies are in a unique position to engage in transnational explorations of what used to be a clearly defined national field. In this paper I would like to demonstrate how by focusing upon a specific historical case: the ways an intriguing, star-studded U.S. melodrama entitled Ship of Fools, produced and directed by the Jewish-American filmmaker Stanley Kramer, was received in West and East Germany in the 1960 s and what this can reveal about exploring historical and cultural issues in a transnational manner for the field of German-American Studies. How might the concept of the transnational help to redefine German American Studies?

13 For one, it offers a framework within which to understand the very idea of German American Studies, for the name suggests that the context itself influences the practice of the discipline in a transnational manner. German-Americanists must be bilingual or even multilingual, which, among other things, allows them access to a much wider variety of sources. German-Americanists also emerge out of a national history where the ties between the two nations have become critical for an understanding of German identity. While German programs are being phased out and the intellectual focus upon the European continent is receding in the U.S. (much like the population of the Western European continent itself, though the expansion of the EU may reverse this trend at some point), the United States remains a critical cultural force in understanding the development of German identity particularly since the second world war. Americanization has long served as a possible way of understanding this influence, but it is actually much more complex. To fully appreciate that complexity, I would like to enlist a number of concepts to define a broader framework for the transnational. These concepts, all of which will be relevant to my case study of Stanley Kramer s adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter s novel Ship of Fools are: 1) transnational and historically specific definitions of the relationship between Nazism and Germanism 2) the cultural cold war 3) the relationship between film and literature and 4) the reception of films across national and cultural boundaries.