Dear Members of the International Research Training Group ‘Between Spaces’ and those interested in the IRTG,

Welcome to the first issue of our Newsletter! Through the Newsletter we want to inform you on a regular basis about Group news, upcoming dates, activities, publications and events. For those of you who don’t yet know our project, you can find below a short description.

The International Research Training Group inaugurated its work in January 2010, with the arrival of most of the scholarship holders in Berlin. The official opening of the IRTG took place in April 2010 in Mexico City, attended by Matthias Kleiner, President of the German Research Foundation, José Antonio de la Peña, Deputy Director of CONACYT, Javier Garcíadiego Dantán, Director of the Colegio de México and Ursula Lehmkuhl, Vice President of Freie Universität Berlin. The opening ceremony was followed by a two-day conference on globalisation research. Immediately after this the scholarship holders presented their projects at a two-day workshop. A report of the inaugural conference in German may be found under: http://www.fu-berlin.de/campusleben/forschen/2010/100421_graduiertenkolleg_zwischen_raeumen/index.html

Video clips of the inaugural conference (April 12-13, 2010) are available at the website of the Colegio de México at: http://www.colmex.mx/videotech/2010/espacios/index.html.

The official opening in Berlin was observed with a ceremony on July 15, 2010. After opening remarks by Marianne Braig, spokeswoman for the IRTG, and a welcoming speech by Peter-André Alt, the President of Freie Universität, Stefan Rinke, spokesman for the IRTG, held a lecture on ‘The Torn Veil. Latin American Revolutions of Independence in an Interstitial Perspective’, which was commented on by Guillermo Zermeño, Mexican spokesman for the IRTG. Over 120 visitors attended the following reception in the courtyard of the Latin American Institute, enjoying the warm weather, tapas and paella. A report of the opening ceremony in German may be found at: http://www.fu-berlin.de/campusleben/forschen/2010/100722_graduiertenkolleg_eroeffnunf/index.html

 

Events in the coming months:

• September 24, 2010, from 12:15 pm on, Latin America Institute, Room 243

Workshop "Visuality, Identity and (Trans-)Nation

The workshop will address methods for the visual analysis of photography, with special consideration of photographs that represent the indígenas. These photographs of the so-called indigenous and ethnic groups of Mexico – particularly those of Raúl Estrada Discua, Luis Márquez and Nacho López – contributed considerably to developing a visual language that shaped the modern ideas of race, ethnicity, nation and trans-nation.

The workshop in Spanish language will take place with the participation of Deborah Dorotinsky, Professor at the Institute for Aesthetic Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de México, and Margit Kern, Professor for Art History at Freie Universität Berlin. Those interested in taking part in the workshop are asked to register at entre-espacios@lai.fu-berlin.de.

• October 6-7, 2010, on both days from 2:00 –5:00 pm, Latin America Institute, Room 243

Workshop “Border Intersection and Signs of the Virgin of Guadalupe” with Silvia Spitta

Silvia Spitta, Professor for Spanish and Comparative Literature in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Dartmouth College, will lecture on and discuss the subject and theses of her book Misplaced Objects (2009). The book is about the movement of objects between Europe and the Americas since 1492. A particular focus is its considerations on the cult round the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe and its transference to the United States. Using this example, the book presents and discusses processes of transculturation. Workshop’s language: Spanish

Those interested in taking part in the workshop are asked to register at entre-espacios@lai.fu-berlin.de

•  October 19, 2010, 6:00 pm, Latin American Institute, Room 243

Meeting of applicants (By invitation)

• October 22, 2010, 9:00 –11:00 am, Latin America Institute, Room 201

Plenary meeting of members of the IRTG (By invitation)

•  October 22, 2010, 11:30 am – 6:00 pm, Latin America Institute, Room 201

IRTG Study Day

This Study Day is a substitutive preparation for the 2011 Summer School, which will take place from June 27 to July 2, 2011. Various interdisciplinary spatial concepts will be presented and discussed in three blocks. In addition, there will be a discussion of other key concepts in interdisciplinary globalisation studies.

Places are limited. Those interested in taking part in the workshop are asked to register at entre-espacios@lai.fu-berlin.de

• October 26, 2010, 6:00 –8:00 pm, Latin America Institute, Room 201

Interdiciplinary Colloquium ‘Movimientos entre espacios: conceptos y análisis de procesos transnacionales y tranculturales’

The Interdisciplinary Colloquium takes place every Tuesday from 6:00 –8:00 pm. Each week a scholarship holder presents his or her project within the framework of the IRTG’s problematic. Detailed programme to follow! The meetings are open to the public and can be attended without registration.

 

Other planned events at the IRTG:

• January 14-15, 2011 - 2nd IRTG Study Day in preparation for the Summer School

•  June 27 to July 2, 2011- Summer School of the IRTG

Meeting of all members of the IRTG, including Mexican scholars, scholarship holders and invited guests.

 

Guest Scholars at the IRTG in the coming months:

Prof. Dr. Deborah Dorotinsky, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas de la Universidad Autónoma de México (September 22 – October 5, 2010)

Deborah Dorotinsky is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the UNAM in Mexico City. She specializes in nineteenth and twentieth century photography of the Indígenas and has done research into visual culture and gender aspects between 1900 and 1950.

Prof. Dr. Silvia Spitta, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Dartmouth College (October 2010)

Silvia Spitta is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. She is especially known as a theorist of transculturation and has also worked on the colonial period, narratives and mestizaje.

Prof. Dr. Carlos Alba, Centro de Estudios Internacionales, El Colegio de México (October 2010 to September 2011)

Carlos Alba is a Mexican spokesman of the IRTG. He is Professor for Sociology, specializing in globalisation studies. He has applied the comparative approach to social and political processes of transition in Germany and Mexico. He has also done research into street trading in Mexico City.

 

Associated Scholar, Guest Scholar at desiguALdades.net, Research Network on Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America

Prof. Dr. Lorenza Villa Lever, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, UNAM (October 2010 to September 2011)

Lorenza Villa Lever is a sociologist and educationalist. She has worked on various aspects of education, with a focus on Mexico, but also beyond the borders of Mexico, using a comparative approach. Her work concentrates also on the relationship between education and the labour market.

 

Blog of the IRTG

Our blog at http://blogs.fu-berlin.de/entre-espacios-en-mexico/

Every week scholarship holders who are doing research in Mexico or other Latin American states report on their work and experiences. Currently Tabea Huth and Sven Kirschlager are giving us a taste of what their stays are like. The blog is open to everyone, but to make comments requires registration.

 

Mexican scholarship holders

The Mexican branch of the IRTG chose five scholarship holders to come to Berlin on a CONACYT scholarship. In October a further selection round will take place in which another fifteen doctoral candidates will be invited to work at the IRTG in Berlin.

Carla Beatriz Zamora Lomeli

Mrs Zamora Lomeli is a sociologist at the Colegio de México. Her dissertation treats the citizens’ movement in Mexico City that fought against the expropriation of land. Mrs Zamora Lomeli stayed at the IRTG in Berlin from June to August 2010. The title of her dissertation is ‘Conflict and Violence between the State and Collective Actors: A Sequestrated Democracy? A case study of the People’s Front in defence of its land in the Mexican state of San Salvador Atenco, 2001-2010’.

Manuel Roberto Escobar

Mr Escobar is a cultural scientist and works at the Programa Universitario de Estudios de Género of the UNAM in Mexico City. Under the direction of Prof. Dr. María Isabel Belausteguigoitia Rius, Mr Escobar is working on trans-identical personality and identity, comparing the social and political situation of trans-identical identity in Bogotá and Mexico City. The title of his dissertation is ‘Body, Power and Resistance in Latin-American Social Movements: The Case of the Transgender Body’. Beginning in September 2010, Mr Escobar will be at the IRTG in Berlin until the end of November.

Francy Liliana Moreno Herrera

Mrs Moreno Herrera is a cultural scientist at the Centro de Investigaciones sobre América Latina y el Caribe of the UNAM in Mexico City. She is working on literary journals from 1940-56 and their concept of universalism. By concentrating on the literary production in journals, Mrs Moreno Herrera is thus treating a very important aspect of Latin American literary history. The title of her dissertation is ‘Universalism in Latin American Literary Magazines from 1940 to 1956’. Mrs Moreno Herrera will be at the IRTG in Berlin/Potsdam from November 2010 to February 2011.

Rafael Mondragón

Mr Mondragón is a cultural scientist at the Centro de Investigaciones sobre América Latina y el Caribe of the UNAM in Mexico City. Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Liliana Weinberg, he is working on anarchist movements in nineteenth century Buenos Aires. The title of his research project is ‘Forms of Sociability and the Aesthetic Values of the Anarchist Bohemian World of the Río de la Plata’. Mr Mondragón will be at the IRTG in Berlin/Potsdam from November 2010 to February 2011.

Alejandro Ramos

Mr Ramos is a cultural anthropologist at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS). His dissertation treats the production of nopal in Tlalnepantla in México. Its title is ‘The Production of Nopal as an Impulse for the Construction of a New Social Dynamic in the Community of Tlalnepantla, Morelos’. Mr Ramos is expected at the IRTG in Berlin in the coming months.

 

For more information, please consult our website: www.entre-espacios.de

 

Office hours of the coordination office: Wednesday, Thursday, 11 am – 1 pm (Room 222)

Opening hours of the library: Thursday 10-11 am (Room 207)

Opening hours of room 207 (Julia, Diana, Jeanette and Carlos) during semester time: Tuesday 3-5 pm

 

Best wishes,

Ingrid Simson and her team

 

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International Research Training Group 'Between Spaces. Movements, Actors and Representations of Globalization'

In recent years, the contemporary globalization experience has induced both social sciences and humanities to ask for the movements that form and transform space and spatial orders. Taking these debates as a starting point and by analyzing those in-between spaces which have emerged in globalization processes from the colonial period until today, the International Research Training Group “Between spaces” seeks to make an original contribution to the study of globalization from the perspective of Latin America. It concentrates on three periods of globalization – that is, on fragmented, discontinuous and often conflictive processes of global interconnection during the colonial period, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as in the present. The Group draws upon theories and concepts under discussion in history as well as in other social sciences and humanities, such as transnational and transcultural perspectives, cultural transfers and translation studies.

Latin American societies are facing challenges caused or boosted by globalisation processes in which political, cultural and social factors intermingle. Since Europeans “discovered” and conquered that world new to them, different movements and actors have continually produced new spaces of action and interaction as well as transnational and transregional interconnections within Latin America, between the Americas and on a global scale. This was always accompanied by representations and discourses underlying a world imagined as fixed spatial units. The research program focuses on these movements, actors and representations. From this perspective, we can identify those spaces that lie between the global and the national levels. Within these spaces, we analyze practices of inclusion and exclusion on the basis of different categories such as race, class, gender and ethnicity.

In order to systematize the wide range of interactions implied by the Group’s agenda, the research program is sub-divided into three research areas: Spaces of Interconnections, Spaces of the Local, and Spaces of Representations.

The IRTG enables young researchers to write their PhD theses in an outstanding research environment. PhD students will be oriented by supervisors from both Mexico and Germany and benefit from different regional academic networks. They spend an extensive period of time studying at our Mexican partner institutions and doing research in Mexico or in other parts of Latin America. We have a lively exchange with our Mexican partner institutions, which also conduct research projects and train doctoral candidates.

 

Partner institutions:

• Latin American Institute of Freie Universität Berlin (Main institute)
• El Colegio de México
• Institute for Romance Languages, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social
• Institute for Romance Languages, Universität Potsdam
• Universidad Autónoma de México