Thinking Across Borders: Intermediality and Interdisciplinarity in Languages and Cultural Production
6th Graduate Student Conference of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
University of Colorado Boulder
April 1-2, 2016
Saturday, April 2nd
9:30- 10:45 Language Change in Spanish
Elizabeth Fisher, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“El presente perfecto vs. el pretérito en Chile: Un análisis basado en el uso”
El propósito de este estudio es identificar los distintos factores que afectan el uso del Presente Perfecto (1) en comparación con el Pretérito (2) en el español chileno.
1. Ejemplo inventado
He estudiado todo el fin de semana.
2. Ejemplo inventado
Estudié todo el fin de semana.
Mientras que el uso del Presente Perfecto (PP) en español usualmente tiene un valor anterior, Schwenter (1994) indica que el PP del español peninsular, como otras lenguas romances, está en el proceso de gramaticalización, mostrando ya un valor perfectivo que un día llegará a reemplazar el pretérito (3).
3. Ejemplo de Schwenter (1994: 96)
El otro día, he pisado un chicle en la acera.
No obstante, varios estudios muestran que el uso del pretérito del español latinoamericano todavía domina en comparación con el presente perfecto en los casos perfectivos y la diferenciación entre el uso en países latinoamericanos es diverso, dependiendo de factores temporales, aspectuales y sociolingüísticos (Westermoreland, 1988; Bustamante, 1991; Henderson, 2008, González Vargas, Olguín, y Pérez, 2009; Rodríguez Louro y Jara Yupanqui, 2011). En este estudio del español chileno, basado en un corpus oral de Santiago de Chile, se analizan 255 ejemplos del uso del Presente Perfecto (110 ejemplos) y el Pretérito (145 ejemplos). Los resultados muestran que el español chileno favorece el uso anterior del PP cuando son considerados los aspectos léxicos, la referencia temporal, los adverbios temporales y el tipo de cláusula utilizado. Por lo tanto, el PP chileno no muestra un movimiento hacía un valor completamente perfectivo. Además, el pretérito es utilizado en algunos casos donde el PP se encontrara en etapas más avanzadas de gramaticalización. Por ejemplo, apuntando los casos del aspecto léxico de los estados y actividades, el PP (45%) compite con el Pretérito (55%), tanto como visto con el uso de adverbiales aproximativos y de frecuencia (PP: 58%; Pretérito: 42%), y las cláusulas relativas (PP: 55%; Pretérito: 45%) e interrogativas (PP: 43%; Pretérito: 57%). Las indicaciones de este trabajo son útiles para desarrollar la información sobre las diferencias dialectales del español latinoamericano, especialmente la variación entre el uso del PP en Chile y Argentina, la que ha mostrado características similares en estudios previos (Rodríguez Louro y Jara Yupanqui, 2011). Se recomienda un análisis más amplio, incluyendo una referencia temporal hodiernal y comparando los resultados el uso del PP en Argentina.
Jessika Muñoz, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“La gramaticalización del presente perfecto en el español de Colombia: Un análisis basado en el uso”
El proceso de gramaticalización del Presente Perfecto (PP) se ha analizado en diferentes variedades del español y se han encontrado diferencias dialectales en el desarrollo y uso del PP (1) en relación con el pretérito (2):
Corpus de Santa Fe de Bogotá:
1) “se han encontrado múltiples dificultades”
2) “se encontró en... sin un asidero, sin un modo de vivir”
Las diferencias de uso y frecuencia del PP reportadas en estudios previos demuestran que esta construcción presenta un ritmo y una dirección diferentes de gramaticalización. Schwenter y Torres-Cacoullos (2008), reportaron que el PP en el español peninsular es la forma por defecto para expresar aspecto perfectivo mientras que en el español mexicano el PP mantiene su función de perfecto; esto último coincide con lo encontrado en otras variedades latinoamericanas (Louro 2009; Louro & Jara Yupanqui 2011; Hernández 2008). Se ha encontrado además que el PP ha desarrollado usos innovadores y funciona como marcador de evidencialidad en algunas variedades (Bustamante 2009). En este estudio, se realiza un análisis cuantitativo de 260 cláusulas para determinar los factores que condicionan el uso del PP y del pretérito con el fin de determinar el nivel de gramaticalización del PP en la variedad bogotana del español colombiano.
Los resultados muestran que el PP en el corpus analizado tiende a ocurrir cuando la referencia temporal es irrelevante, en presencia de adverbios temporales aproximativos y de frecuencia y con verbos que indican actividades; mientras los adverbios temporales definidos, los predicados puntuales (logros), y la referencia temporal indeterminada favorecen el uso del pretérito en esta variedad. Estos resultados indican que la forma por defecto para indicar pasado perfectivo en la variedad colombiana sigue siendo el pretérito. Aunque se observan algunos casos en los que el PP tiene valor perfectivo, en la mayoría de los datos el PP mantiene su valor de perfecto.
Jeremy Rud, University of Colorado Boulder (Department of Linguistics)
“Totalmente distinto: A Corpus-Based Study of Adjective Intensifiers in Spanish”
Intensifiers in English have long proved volatile items with a propensity for change in the language. As our utterances must be ‘relevant’ in Gricean terms, intensifiers occupy a functional category with a permanent need for new linguistic means to justify what we say (Lorenz, 1999). Many studies describe the change of intensifiers in English. Most notably, Kennedy (2002; 2003) and Tao (2007) describe the development of intensifier + adjective collocations in English and the grammaticalization of “absolutely + x” to yield an affirmative-response discourse marker, evidencing Emergent Grammar (Hopper 1988, 1998; Bybee and Hopper 2001). Despite such analyses in English, however, there lacks scholarly work comparable to these studies that contributes a diachronic analysis of intensifiers in Spanish. With this study, then, I intend to provide an initial contribution to the literature on the subject by proposing a series of largely open-ended research questions: First, has usage of certain intensifiers in Spanish increased? Second, have certain intensifier + adjective combinations become collocated in Spanish, as have many in English? Finally, what implications do the results of these questions have for future change of intensifiers in Spanish?
In this study I focus on three intensifiers in transition from 19th to 20th Century Spanish, absolutamente, completamente, and totalmente, and only as modifiers of adjectives. To conduct the analysis, I extracted data from the 19th and 20th Century sections of the Corpus del Español (CDE), first searching for each instance in which the selected intensifiers are used to modify a subsequent adjective and selecting those collocations with ten or more instances for further analysis as possible prefabrications in the language. Finally, I took each resulting intensifier + adjective collocation and compiled the results from each century for comparison. For certain data sets I also include the common intensifier muy, ‘very,’ to provide a basis for comparison and from which to draw hypotheses about the future changes of these specific intensifiers in the language.
After compiling the data, I draw several conclusions. Use of intensifiers is on the rise, which I ascribe to speakers’ attempts to keep their messages relevant by modifying adjectives with intensifiers. Moreover, totalmente + adjective appears to be the preferred method to do this in 20th Century Spanish. Certain intensifier + adjective collocations also become apparent: distinto, diferente, and nuevo collocate strongly with the selected intensifiers. That these adjectives in particular collocate strongly strengthens my belief that speakers adhere to the Gricean Maxim of Relevance by using intensifiers to keep their messages relevant, as all three adjectives indicate novelty and uniqueness. Interestingly, however, many adjectives that collocated with certain intensifiers in the 19th Century collocated with different intensifiers in the 20th Century or did not collocate with any. So, I conclude that as speakers use intensifiers more frequently with certain adjectives to increase the relevance of these adjectives, they become collocated and prefabricated in discourse. As the strength of that collocation increases through frequency of use, the relevance of the construction fades and a cycle emerges where different intensifier + adjective collocations result as more frequent in different time periods in the history of Spanish, overall evidencing the volatility of, and competition between, intensifiers.
9:30- 10:45 Early Modern Literature and Its Reception
Manuel Martin, University of Alabama (Department of Modern Languages and Classics)
“Updating the Quixote”
In 1605 don Miguel de Cervantes published Don Quixote of La Mancha, ten years later he published the Second Part, creating a character who spread his wonderful adventures around the world. Even though he did not think it was his best book, Don Quixote became the most important work of Spanish literature, and one of the most important in history. Today his work is more alive than ever. Throughout all this time, and with progress in the last century of film, televisión, internet and multimedia productions, distribution of Cervantes' book has expanded universally. Access to this work is produced today by a variety of platforms, the monopoly that was first held on paper, gone. Since the first edition of the first part by Juan de la Cuesta in 1605, to the famous edition of Francisco Rico, to finally the latest translation of Andres Trapiello, updating the work of Cervantes leads us to wonder until what extent new versions will accurately reflect the text and the original figure of don Quixote. Is Cervantes using new media to give even more publicity to his book, or are new platforms using Don Quijote to give content to their productions? This study tries to deepen the literary, sociological and published analysis that lies behind the new forms of dissemination of Cervantes' work, trying to clarify whether the new media help to facilitate disclosure, or whether on the contrary, the quixotic reality transmitted is distorted, building a don Quixote that Cervantes himself could not recognize.
Gillian Cleary, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Bartolomé de Las Casas: Abogado canónico e inspirador de la Teología de liberación”
Una de las figuras más controversiales e intrigantes de la época colonial, Bartolomé de Las Casas resalta en la historia imperial española como el defensor y apóstol de los indios, y como la voz de la conciencia cristiana europea en América Latina. Más de cuatrocientos años después de la vida de Las Casas, el fraile dominicano todavía tiene una presencia concreta en Latinoamérica, y ha surgido como el “unwitting progenitor of today’s Liberation Theology” (Pagden xiii). Efectivamente, en este movimiento latinoamericano del siglo XX, los adherentes a la Teología de liberación alaban a Las Casas y lo consideran uno de sus héroes (con mucha razón). Sin embargo, en su representación de él, no incorporan algunas realidades de la vida y los argumentos de Las Casas, principalmente, su lealtad a la corona española en tanto es origen de la fe verdadera y cristiana, y su visión paternalista de los indios. Es decir, aunque Bartolomé de Las Casas sí emerge de su contexto histórico como una figura radical y una voz para la justicia en el debate colonial en torno al sistema de encomienda, no cuestiona la colonización en sí, y quiere efectuar cambios dentro del marco político de la supremacía de la corona española y la misión santa de la iglesia católica, lo cual lo convierte en una figura compleja y sumamente interesante.
Alexander Cárdenas, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Mestizos, Cultural Indeterminacy and the Strategic Construction of the Past: Criticism Against Colonial Rule in Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s Comentarios reales de los Incas (1609) and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Historia de la nación chichimeca (1616)”
In this paper I will explore the ways in which Comentarios reales de los Incas and Historia de la nación chichimeca strategically construct a Europeanized version of the pre-Hispanic past. I consider that these texts not only redeem the pre-Hispanic past in the European view but also implicitly criticize some key aspects of colonial rule. There is in fact a reevaluation of the past that has a present-oriented objective. I will start off by analyzing the cultural indeterminacy that pervades these historias. The cultural indeterminacy resides, first of all, in the fact that these histories were written by mestizos who had a dual cultural legacy. Both of these historians were descendants of Amerindian rulers and Spaniards. On the one hand, they grew up surrounded by their Amerindian culture, immersed in it; they could speak their Amerindian language fluently; they were active recipients of the oral transmission of knowledge of native history, customs, traditions and beliefs carried out by native elders. On the other hand, these mestizos were also Spanish in the Hispanicized ways in which they led their lives: in their habits, in their beliefs, in their European and Christian formal education, and in the official language in which they wrote their histories. The dual cultural legacy of these mestizos, their conditions as colonial subjects, their “intermediate identity” and their political agendas are what make their texts culturally indeterminate.
11:00-12:15 Phonology
Bridget McFadden, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Intervocalic Voicing of Spanish Consonant /s/ in Bilingual English/Spanish Speech”
Craig Welker, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“‘No saben ni dónde tenemos las chichis las mujeres’: Indexicalidad, gesto vocal y la negación de la identidad muxe en Juchitán, México”
Blommaert sostiene que la antropología lingüística debe tomar en cuenta que, cuando la gente cambia de estilo al hablar, lo hace de una manera relevante a las actividades y trabajo social en que está involucrada (2011, 5). Tomando esta idea como axiomática, este trabajo examina el uso de alófonos particulares de /s/ en el español de Juchitán de Zarragoza, una ciudad pequeña en Oaxaca, México. Concretamente, se investiga cómo alófonos distintos de /s/ se usan en el habla de muxes y de gente no-muxe al hablar sobre muxes. Específicamente, este análisis explora cómo la manera en que dos muxes juchitecas utilizan este variable indirectamente indica la femineidad y, así, construye una particular identidad de género no masculina.
En además, muestro cómo una hablante femenina deslegitima la identidad de género muxe por su uso de un alófono particular de /s/ que indica, a pesar de otros significados sociales, la masculinidad heteronormativa. De estos datos, demuestro primero que las muxes usan extensivamente el variable alveolar de /s/, así indicando la femineidad y permitiéndoles desempeñar una identidad de ni hombre ni mujer de la que la gente no muxe luego puede distanciarse con tal de deslegitimar este rol de género. Además de considerar la indexicalidad de los alófonos diferentes de /s/, sostengo que, en estos contextos, el uso de alófonos específicos puede interpretarse cómo gestos vocales que, junto con gestos físicos, pueden funcionar para legitimar o para deslegitimar afirmaciones de identidad y, de este modo, participan en la creación discursiva del género.
Brenna Day, University of Colorado Boulder (Department of Linguistics)
“Romance Diphthongization: Spanish, Italian, and Dialects of Italian”
Modern Spanish and Italian are sister languages of the Romance language family, along with many other languages and dialects with roots deriving from Vulgar Latin. Because the two languages are so closely related and such a robust reconstruction of the Proto-Romance language has been created, these languages provide an excellent substrate for comparative diachronic analysis. Interestingly, these two languages share the quality of having diphthongs in the stems of the present indicative conjugations of many verbs. A comparative look at the patterns of diphthongization in the two languages illuminated that fact that they this diphthongization manifests differently in each language. Some verbs that had a /e/ ♦□ /ie / or /o/ to /ue/ change in the stem in Spanish did not have a change in Italian. If these two languages are in the same language family and share the same proto-form, why did they develop such different patterns of diphthongization? This paper traces these patterns in both modern Spanish and modern Italian. An analysis of the Tuscan dialect of Italian is also used as an additional factor in discerning the motivations of Romance diphthongization. Previously articulated theories will be briefly summarized, then a novel theory for explaining the divergence of diphthongization patterns will be proposed. This theory proposes that the difference between modern Italian and Spanish vowel diphthongization in verb stems is due to competing influences of two phonological processes: stress patterns and metaphony, also referred to as vowel harmony.
11:00-12:30 Literature and Journalism: 20th Century Latin America
José M. Herbozo, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Experiencia e intermedialidad: la imaginación melodramática y los textos periodísticos en Libro de Manuel de Julio Cortázar”
Uno de los más grandes lugares comunes sobre la obra de Cortázar es el que cancela el interés en su obra narrativa a partir de su acercamiento al debate programático y artístico en torno a la Revolución Cubana. Las polémicas que sostuvo involucraron el problema de la representación de los textos periodísticos, tanto en relación al principio de concreción y actualidad que el texto periodístico demanda, como al cuestionamiento que la escritura literaria debía producir sobre dicha aspiración de objetividad.
A diferencia de la serie de intervenciones y juegos textuales que dominan la escritura del ámpliamente vendido Último Round (1969), es en Libro de Manuel (1973) en dónde Cortázar dramatiza la capacidad de representación de los textos periodísticos en relación a las ansiedades de un grupo de expatriados latinoamericanos que sueñan con hacer la revolución. En esa tensión operan la difusión y normalización de una sensibilidad transnacional del capitalismo avanzado, que afecta las expectativas y temores que la lucha de vanguardia política de entonces debía enfrentar. A partir de una lectura del material periodístico incorporado en Libro de Manuel, mi presentación se concentra en cómo la intermedialidad coopera en la simplificación de la experiencia moderna a antagonismos básicos y fórmulas reconocibles de interacción.
Kelly Drumright, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Palabras y pistolas: el retrato de la política mexicana posrevolucionaria en La sombra del Caudillo (1929) de Martín Luis Guzmán”
Cuando la trama de una novela tiene una estrecha relación con una realidad histórica, existe la tendencia de que la crítica se enfoque en arrojar luz sobre los vínculos entre el texto y los eventos y las personas reales: si un personaje podría ser la encarnación novelesca de una persona histórica, o si un suceso narrado podría corresponder a un acontecimiento facticio, etcétera. Ha sido éste el caso para La sombra del Caudillo por Martín Luís Guzmán (1887-1976), publicado como libro en Madrid a finales de 1929 después de aparecer publicado por entregas en tres periódicos — La Prensa de San Antonio, Texas; La Opinión de Los Ángeles; y El Universal de México. Es innegable que ésta es una novela sobre la época de intensa violencia política de la posrevolución mexicana. Tampoco quiero decir que sea equívoco concluir que eventos reales — concretamente las experiencias de la revolución y la posrevolución, el régimen de Álvaro Obregón (que duró desde 1920 hasta 1924) y el asesinato de Francisco Serrano en octubre de 1927 — hayan sido el ímpetu de la composición de la obra. Sin embargo, La sombra del Caudillo no es una novela que trate exclusivamente del relato ficticio de ciertos eventos históricos. Por lo tanto, en este trabajo propongo una lectura alternativa de la novela que se enfoque en el texto mismo con la meta de profundizar nuestro entendimiento de la obra como complemento a las investigaciones anteriores que han contribuido a su estudio (y con mucha razón) a través de la contextualización histórica. En mi trabajo, muestro que se puede leer La sombra del Caudillo principalmente como una meditación narrativa (ficticia) sobre cómo convencer con el substrato de un momento y un contexto histórico en particular.
En primer lugar, usando la Retórica de Aristóteles analizo la importancia de la oratoria en la novela como la táctica principal para convencer. El discurso oral es el medio privilegiado por los personajes políticos, tanto para intrigar como para manipular la opinión pública. Sin embargo, el ambiente de violencia latente que crea Guzmán en la novela revela que los duelos verbales son preámbulos de duelos físicos. Mientras avanza la trama, convencer cede el paso a vencer, a la aniquilación del enemigo, y ganará quien dispare primero. Para terminar, muestro cómo la victoria se consolida a través de la prensa en La sombra del Caudillo. De hecho, es la manera perfecta de asegurar el triunfo: permite ocultar los medios extrajudiciales utilizados hasta tal punto que no hace falta convencer. El público solamente tiene acceso a una sola versión de la historia, la versión elaborada y sancionada por los ganadores.
Juan García Oyervides, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Journalists and Modern Heroes in Latin American Contemporary Literature”
The present paper will explore the value of the term hero and its validity to describe certain journalistic figures that appear in contemporary works of literature (fiction and nonfiction). My main objective is to pose the concept of heroism within the context of Latin American modernity, and identify how contemporary forms of narrative address the social necessity or lack of role models as part of a historical process of iconicity of culture and society.
I will address the specific case of Fate, the journalist protagonist in “La parte de Fate” in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, whose spectacular form of heroism derives from pop-film culture. The figure’s problematic role as a hero can be read as a literary commentary on the forms in which film-culture forces a series of expectations on the readers which ultimately reproduce violent models of conduct and establish a moral dialectic of a villains/heroes.
Allison Glover, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Feminism, Journalism and Literature: The Mediated Testimony of Doris Tijerino”
Somos millones…la vida de Doris María, combatiente nicaragüense is a mediated testimony. It tells the story of a female FMLN combatant who, in the 1960s and 1970s, fought to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship and put an end to U.S. intervention in Nicaragua. Margaret Randall, the mediator and author of the book, as well as a fluent Spanish speaker, tape-recorded her interviews with Tijerino, transcribed and organized her words, and published the text in Mexico in 1977.
In this paper, I demonstrate that Somos millones may be viewed as a liminal space in which feminism, journalism and literature converge to give voice to a subaltern population in general and to one woman in particular. I argue that Tijerino and Randall collaborate to produce and disseminate new information by centering a female perspective on both the systems of oppression – cultural, economic, political and social – that operate in Nicaragua, and popular resistance to them. Finally, I explore the ways in which Somos millones lays bare the undeniable relationship between knowledge production, engagement, action and social justice.
1:30-3:00 Keynote Address
Professor Kris Lane, Tulane University
“Text & Truth: The Great Potosi Mint Fraud of 1649 & Arzans' Historia"
3:00-4:15 Bilingualism & Education of Language Learners
Tracy Weber, University of Colorado Boulder (Department of Linguistics)
“ELL Engagement in an ELD Course and General Education Courses”
I studied five high school English Language Learners in their English Language Development (ELD) course as well as their general education courses. I specifically observed how the teacher was engaging students in the ELD course versus teacher engagement in general education courses. I examined strategies each teacher implemented in the course in addition to student engagement responses. Students were more engaged in their ELD course because of direct instruction, modeling, and affirmative practices. The ELD teacher engaged students by validating their comments and opinions. They also made sure to provide multiple examples for students to understand the content. Students were also engaged in their general education courses, but not as effectively unless there was direct one-on-one teacher engagement and support. I would suggest that teachers implement clear directions for assignments and provide one-on-one work time every week.
Raquel Laredo Valero, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Grammatical Gender Acquisition of Spanish L3 by Turkish L1”
This study analyses the gender acquisition in adult Turkish L1 learners of L3 Spanish. The aim is to focus on their learning process and analyze the difficulties when acquiring grammatical gender. 31 Turkish L1 undergraduate students of L3 Spanish complete done questionnaire in which they had to identify the correct grammatical gender of 37 Spanish nouns. In this list were included rulebased endings, exceptions and nouns with common gender. The results demonstrate that, even though the students’ Turkish L1 learners here exhibit a lack of language gender transfer from Turkish, they were capable of learning the most general rule which consists of nouns ending in o are masculine and nouns ending in a are feminine. However, they could not accomplish the same with other rule-based noun endings and exceptions to all rules. In this study the implications of these findings together with other research and experiments previously conducted for gender acquisition in other languages with gender such as Romanian are discussed and analyzed.
Caroline Good, University of Colorado Boulder (Department of Linguistics)
“Early Bilingual Semantic Event Categorization”
Children’s navigation and management of more than one language has implications to their educational experience and to what they bring to the task of learning and communicating. This can be especially tricky in a monolingual school setting or without available bilingual resources specific to their languages. A child’s communicative intent may not be fully understood by adults and peers who don’t share the same linguistic experiences. Even bilinguals who are fluent in both languages may have interpretations of events in their world that do not match up one to one with those of monolinguals of either of their languages because they have access to a broader possibility of cognitive representations through the semantic frames of both of their languages. Because of this, the more we can further our understanding about what is going on in a bilingual brain, the more we can adapt educational programs and resources to attend to their specific needs.
The current study replicates a MPI ‘cutting’ and ‘breaking’ study with simultaneous bilingual children to investigate their semantic event category boundaries and the influence in those categories from each of their languages. Findings from this preliminary study suggest that the semantic categories of bilingual children are more fluid than those of monolinguals with fuzzier fine-grained distinctions and more variation between speakers. This study also finds quite plausible, that there are strong contextual affects as to which language influences category decisions in any given speech setting.
3:00-4:15 Identifying New Performative Spaces
Elia Romera Figueroa, University of Wyoming (Modern and Classical Languages Department)
“Poesía y música en los 70: La intermedialidad al servicio de la libertad”
¿Quién despierta la conciencia social en España en los 70? ¿Cómo Lorca, Celaya, Machado, Hernández o Alberti resucitan en una España que ve la libertad a la vuelta de la esquina pero aún no la disfruta?
Cuando los conciertos se vuelven pacíficos combates y las armas son la poesía y la voz, reconocemos que vivimos un nuevo campo de batalla. Paco Ibañez dará el pistoletazo de salida para que poetas y cantautores se abracen con el fin de enseñarnos la manera de hermanar la poesía social con la canción protesta para generar un movimiento de compromiso ciudadano.
Analizaré cuatro poemas que consiguieron hacer vibrar a una España reprimida por la dictadura de Franco. Serrat con su Cantares de Machado, Paco Ibañez con A galopar de Alberti, Serrat y Miguel Ríos con Para la libertad de Miguel Hernández y Soledad Bravo con La poesía es un arma cargada de futuro de Gabriel Celaya. Representan las voces que demostraron como trasmitir una inolvidable enseñanza a esa sociedad española que deseaba clamar libertad.
Al exponer la repercusión de estos poemas, ahora cantados, abordaremos la lucha que llevaron a cabo los cantautores contra el poder hegemónico que censuraba la voz de esos escritores republicanos. Honrando al Me queda la palabra de Blas de Otero consiguieron que el grito en papel de los poetas fuera escuchado por una población que dejaba atrás una dictadura que moría para empezar a galopar hacia la libertad.
Georgina Oller Bosch, University of Wyoming (Modern and Classical Languages Department)
“La pequeña gran pantalla: El lugar de los guiones de las teleseries de autor en la literatura”
La “literatura de la pantalla” (the screenwriting) — si es que existe — nació como un concepto acuñado en 1943 por John Gassner, guionista de Hollywood en la época de los grandes estudios. Para Gassner, el término the screenwriting era el idóneo para describir aquella literatura que adquiría forma de guion literario cinematográfico (Gassner y Nichols vii). En el trabajo que presento, “literatura de la pantalla” es el concepto al cual también recurro para aludir a aquella literatura que podría tomar forma de guion literario televisivo. Sin embargo, ¿un guion literario de cualquier programa de televisión puede ser etiquetado como literatura?
La edad de oro que actualmente viven las series de ficción dramática,1 dentro y fuera de los Estados Unidos, ha reavivado la discusión sobre la pertinencia o no de calificar los guiones en general y los de las teleseries en particular como textos literarios. A fin de contribuir al debate, mi objetivo de investigación es triple. En primer lugar, revelar si los guiones de las llamadas teleseries dramáticas son textos susceptibles de ser considerados literarios, como lo son las obras de teatro. En segundo lugar, precisar si dichos guiones pueden ser categorizados, también, como género. Por último, mi propósito es determinar si existe o no la llamada “literatura de la [pequeña gran] pantalla”.
Kelly Moore, University of Wyoming (Modern and Classical Languages Department)
“Powerful Panels: Memory and Identity in El arte de volar (2009)”
On May 4th, 2001 Antonio Altarriba Lope threw himself from the fourth floor window of his assisted-living facility. Following his death, his son — a graphic novelist also named Antonio — wrote the graphic novel El arte de volar. Antonio’s life unfolds alongside the major events of 20th century Spain. Graphic novels embed the past into the present in technically sophisticated ways. This novel begins with the father, old and infirm, living in an assisted care facility. After only a few pages, Altarriba (the son and storyteller) flips the narrative perspective: he assumes his father’s identity as an avatar and thus relieves his life’s journey. The synthesis of two perspectives acknowledges the ghost of the past and allows for its cohabitation in the present. The panel by panel method of storytelling powerfully narrates traumatic histories through codes which require thoughtful action and collaboration on the part of the reader. The Spanish Civil War represented in the graphic novel is a provocation to study intermedial narratives in contemporary Spanish literature and their contribution to the study of memory. Following the theory of Postmemory proposed by Miriam Hirsch, I argue that the graphic novel is a medium which, in El arte de volar (2009), allows the author to possess the spirit of his deceased father, thereby reliving his father’s memories, and achieving a sense of closure regarding his father’s suicide.
4:30-5:45 Latin American Literature and Visual Culture
Miluska Benavides, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“The Ritual Time for the Dying Body in Two Fictions of Mario Bellatin: Efecto invernadero (1992) and Salón de belleza (1994)”
I aim to study Mario Bellatin’s early fiction, Efecto invernadero [The Greenhouse Effect] (1992) and Salón de belleza [Beauty Salon] (1994), as explorations of the experience of time in death and agony. In both novellas, the agony and transition to death is codified through the remnants of Western (Catholic and American) and Eastern (Japanese imagery) ritual objects and practices. The characters design a set of stringent rules that are not inspired by a spirituality or creed, but by an artistic taste. In that sense, I propose that both fictions dramatize the time and space of the sacred in a secular context, and offer a new model to experience death based on the logic of ritual. In this model, death belongs to one’s own private space, so the dying body is no longer under the domain of medical policy. Indeed, the violent experience of traditional ritual is replaced by simulation of quietness and contemplation. The agony and the pre-mortuary environment are staged carefully in order to control the experience of time. This control is also reflected in the way both fictions are enunciated. The brevity and episodic structure, on one side, and the monologue, on the other side, favor the present and immediacy. Therefore, the fictions omit sequence; the past is recalled from a present enunciation, which seems to be the only manner to express the immediate experience of the dying body. This perspective offers another side of the motif of illness and the corruption of the body. By proposing a secularized ritual time and space for mortuary practices in a secular context, Bellatin’s fictions elaborate the contemporary connection with the sacred though the transition of death controlled by the own dying individual.
María Fernanda Iwasaki, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Crónicas desde el espejo: el uso de la fotografía en la obra literaria de Mario Bellatin”
Mario Bellatin (México, 1960) es, por encima de todo, un creyente fervoroso de la creación con mayúsculas, un escritor heterodoxo y polifacético cuyo objetivo no es tanto promover la creación de textos híbridos e interdisciplinares como permitir que sus universos literarios sobrevivan con independencia de las etiquetas geográficas, las clasificaciones genéricas y los soportes expresivos que otros se empeñen en atribuirles. Así, su interés por la ficción no solo lo ha impulsado a construir mundos imaginarios más allá del ámbito de la palabra − a través de la fotografía, el cine y la performance − sino a inundar la propia realidad con sus personajes y sus historias.
Un recurso identificable dentro de la obra de Bellatin a la hora de disolver la frontera entre lo real y lo imaginario es la combinación de imágenes y palabras. Es por eso que el presente ensayo se propone reflexionar sobre el carácter fronterizo de las fotografías insertas en sus libros, pues aunque los objetos fotografiados pertenecen al mundo material y cognoscible, el significado de las imágenes se construye en relación a la historia narrada. De tal forma que, mientras la fotografía otorga al relato ilusión de realidad, el texto sirve para poner en entredicho la veracidad de las imágenes que lo ilustran. Teniendo en cuenta la dialéctica particular que se establece entre la fotografía y el texto en la obra de Bellatin, demostraré que el objetivo que persigue el escritor maexicano-peruano no es necesariamente el de confundir a sus lectores, sino mas bien el de liberarlos de esa búsqueda innecesaria de lo real dentro de la literatura, como si las historias literarias no se bastasen por sí mismas o como si la historia no fuese siempre, y al mismo tiempo, lo que aconteció, lo que pudo haber sucedido y lo que imaginamos que sucedió.
Javier Muñoz, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Images of a Mutilated Body: Pornography and Femicide in Roberto Bolaño”
In this paper I will focus on the references to photography and movies in Estrella distante and 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. Moreover, I’ll discuss Bolaños’ views on both the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of visual artifacts. His narrative production has a metafictional dimension, in which the questioning of writing and narrative devices is made by establishing analogies with other forms of material and symbolic productions. My hypothesis is that Estrella distante and 2666 include references to pornography (a specific genre defined by the stimulation of viewer’s sexual arousal through the exposure of bodies) in order to provide an experience of the body as a totality, and an access to a sacred or numinous experience in postindustrial societies. In these novels, the pornographic works do not only represent bodies as source of pleasure, but also modify bodies and explore its transitions and its disappearance (namely, mutilated and dead bodies.) Even though pornography doesn’t have any prestige in the artistic field, Roberto Bolaño’s novels include characters who participate in pornography works as a way to explore historical avant-garde´s postulates about artistic and aesthetic experiences. Through the artistic performances of Carlos Wider in Estrella distante and the community involved in snuff film, prostitution and femicide in 2666, my hypothesis is that both novels explore the ethical limitations of artistic creation, as well as the recovery of a numinous dimension in aesthetics. Also, both Estrella distante and 2666 are not pornographic works, but they reveal a cultural logic in pornography that literary writing should questioning in order to configure its own poetics and ethics.
4:30-5:45 Transforming the Limits of Body and Text
María José Maddox, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“AIDS and the Staging of Bodily Disintegration in People with AIDS and Unbecoming”
For authors Timothy E. Cook and David C. Colby, when writing about the mass mediation of AIDS in the late 1980’s, if Vietnam was the first “living-room war” (where American families received broadcast images from the occurrences in Southeast Asia), then AIDS could have been the first “living-room epidemic.” AIDS, which by 2009 had accumulated 300,000 deaths from the gay community alone, in Andrew Sullivan’s reading: “amounted to a plague of medieval dimensions”. Why then did the media and the government largely ignore it? ... The specification of ‘high-risk groups’, such as male homosexuals and IV drug users, gave most middle-class American citizens the feeling that the disease was a mild, distant threat. It had been warded off and discarded as “gay cancer” or “gay pneumonia”, conceived as an unlikely “visit” to suburban houses. Secondly, the subject matter of AIDS, mixing as it does references to “blood, semen, sexuality, and death”, defied traditional notions of <>... I would like to underline the fact that AIDS (regardless of the fascination or repulsion it may have provoked), had the potential to become a ‘spectacle’. Eric Michaels, in his death-journal Unbecoming, sarcastically claims that the reason for his contraction of AIDS was because “it is now in the cover of Life, circa 1987…” The public-ness it exuded had the power to transform a very private matter (one’s sexual orientation or illness) into a ‘happening’; the “it” people were (or could have been) talking about... Departing from the historical framing of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s, I will comment on two autobiographical texts (co)written by HIV positive people in their attempt to gain visibility and agency through the (re)telling of their lives upon diagnosis. In both People with AIDS and Unbecoming, the protagonists discursively construct (“perform”) their subjectivity as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ patients and ‘stage’ the various phases of physical degradation. Regardless of the final outcome, the staging of their illness (and consequent act of dying) satisfied a certain need to survive (or become immortal) through an artistic artifact. The photographers, editors and publishers involved in these projects provided a platform by which these particular AIDS patients found a way to ‘talk-back’ against society’s wishes to see them silenced and suffering ‘quietly’.
Niki Tito, University of Colorado Boulder (Spanish and Portuguese Department)
“Tránsito hacia la disolución: Subversión de la noción de identidad en Lorde de João Gilberto Noll”
El protagonista de Lorde (2004) de João Gilberto Noll, un innominado escritor brasileño, es invitado a un viaje a Londres por motivos de trabajo. Tras una serie de itinerarios y eventos insólitos, el escritor va experimentando una extraña mutación. De este modo, el viaje se convierte en un fin en sí mismo y el desplazamiento adquiere un doble cariz: es físico pero también identitario.
La novela de Noll es plenamente consciente de que toda identidad es una construcción artificial y, de hecho, cancela cualquier discusión previa al tener este motivo como punto de partida de la narración. Así, la pregunta que se plantea es más bien acerca de la legitimidad de una identidad específica en un mundo dominado por el mercado y los medios de comunicación, en el que el escritor –el artista, el individuo– obtiene una identidad válida únicamente tras ser codificado como mercancía.
Llevado por la voluntad de diluir la identidad proporcionada en otra (¿personal, fragmentada, plural?), la aventura del escritor protagonista es un intento radical de subversión de la noción clásica de identidad entendida como representación frente a una noción de identidad como presentación, mientras se embarca en una forma extrema de viaje.
Leah K. S. Holz, University of Colorado Boulder (Department of French and Italian)
“Unstable Identities in Unsettling Times: Exploring Intermediality and Women Writers in Paris Between Two Wars”
Caren Kaplan, in her book Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourse of Displacement (1996), blurs the boundaries between modernism and postmodernism, calling for a turn toward modern imperialism in order to understand postmodern use of terms. Using Robert Young’s notion that postmodernism is marked by a “self-consciousness of historical relativity” and also by the “problematic of the place of Western culture in relation to non-Western cultures”, she argues that there “are no better ‘historical moments’ to examine than those that pertain to modern imperialism. In particular, the interpellation of economic and cultural spheres through the mediation of modernism requires a closer look” (Kaplan 9). During the interwar period there was a large influx of people who came to Paris from many different countries. Categories used to describe these people include: “migrants”, “workers”, “refugees”, “immigrants” and “expatriates”. In this paper I will explore works by writers Irène Némirovsky, Josephine Baker, Gisèle Prassinos and Banine, four very different women who lived in Paris during this turbulent period, whose stories share common themes of questions of displacement, belonging and home. I will examine their specific use of terms to describe someone who has come to Paris and how experiences of intermediality contributed to the creation of certain community identities. I will also look at how these labels continue to be of interest to contemporary issues, especially with the rise of dangerous rhetoric proliferated throughout the media in regards to the refugee crisis in Europe.
6:00 Closing Remarks