<fontfamily><param>Times</param><bigger><bigger>Call for Papers
"Transforming Cultures"
Latin American Studies Program, Cornell University
=46ebruary 27-28, l998
Closing date for abstracts: December 31, l997
The space between Latin America and the Western World, a space that
seemingly used to be measured in light years, has shrunken to the speed
of transmission of visual and auditory culture. Hollywood movies are
released simultaneously in North and South America; Brazilian and
Venezuelan soap operas have a greater audience than any Gabriel Garc=EDa
M=E1rquez novel, and often serve as the vehicle that provides a
transition between traditional values and modern structures for the
people in the countries they serve. Nara Ara=FAjo points to the influence
of heavy metal rock music in the formation of a new consciousness among
young Cuban women writers. Tom=E1s Ibarra Frausto has been documenting
the influence of Chicano art on young Chilean and Argentine
repatriates. Garc=EDa Canclini talks about the disconcerting effect of
>speaking to a traditional Zapotecan weaver who is watching Mexican
television in Spanish, conversing in a desultory manner with his father
in Zapotec, and commenting on how he got the idea for his weavings of
Klee, Picasso, et al from English-speaking tourists who work in the
Museum of Modern Art in New York City. And in the United States,
MacDonalds' serve breakfast burritos to huipil-and-jeans clad
customers.. =20
While the outcome of this continuous and heterogeneous exchange of
goods and cultural practices is yet to be determined, it seems clear
that none of the audiences are merely passive receivers of manipulative
hype. At the very least, these cultural intersections offer dissenting
subjects the possibility of producing contestatory practices,
narratives of resistance that may reconfigure the horizons of what
counts globally today as the political.
=20
In this conference we will focus on some of the markers of these
transformations in culture: popular music, television, textiles, comic
books, etc. This conference welcomes submissions that address our
awareness of the shifting relation of these multifaceted cultural
products to an ambiguously negotiated sense of self in a transnational
reality.
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gger><bigger>
</bigger></bigger></fontfamily>Please submit abstracts by Dec 31, 1997
to:
Mary Jo Dudley
Latin American Studies Program
190 Uris Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
<excerpt>fax: (607) 255-8919
</excerpt>