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

with this, the second, issue of the IRTG ‘Between Spaces’ Newsletter, we would like to inform you about our news and current events.

 

Changes in the staff of the Coordination Office:

Jeanette Kördel, who worked for a year as a student assistant in the Coordination Office and who also actively supported the project during its realisation, has brought her work with the IRTG to an end. With the conclusion of her studies, she is now following other plans, which will lead her first to the USA. We wish her all the best for the future and thank her for the years during which she accompanied our project with keen engagement.

Carlos Pérez Ricart has worked since April 2010 as an intern in the Coordination Office. He is now returning to Mexico so as to complete his studies there. We would like to thank him cordially for his active support of our project in a number of areas.

To fill the gaps left by their departure, we hope to welcome in the next few weeks an assistant coordinator, and in addition another student assistant. Those interested in these positions should note the invitation to application on our homepage.

 

Office hours of the Coordination Office in the coming months:

Room 207 (Julia/Diana) Tues 3 – 5 pm and Thurs 10-11 am

Room 222 (Ingrid) Tues 2-4 pm and Thurs 11 am – 1 pm (beginning November 9)

 

Report on events of recent months:

Workshop ‘Visuality, Identity and (Trans)Nation’ with Deborah Dorotinsky (UNAM) and Margit Kern (FU), September 24, 2010

On September 24, 2010, Prof. Dr. Deborah Dorotinsky conducted the workshop ‘Visualidad, identidad y (trans)nación’ for the International Research Training Group ‘Between Spaces’; Prof. Dr. Margit Kern and Prof. Dr. Ingrid Kummels were commentators. Mrs Dorotinsky, who took her doctorate in cultural anthropology, has been a professor at the “Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas“ of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) since 2004.

The aim of the workshop was to give an insight into visual methodologies that afford an analysis of the potency of the images of painting, photography and architecture in relation to concepts and the negotiation of collective identity. The focus was the question of the meaning of visual cultures, with a view to the production, consumption and circulation of photographs during the post-revolutionary phase of Indigenism in Mexico. At the time, Mexican state policy strove to ‘integrate’ indigenous populations into the nation. Mrs Dorotinsky explained the major part played by the numerous published and circulating photographic images by Raúl Estrada Discua, Luis Márquez and Nacho López in the construction of concepts such as ethnic membership, nation and later trans-nation in Mexico. Concentrating on the increasingly stereotypical image of one ethnic group, the Yaqui in north-western Mexico, she showed the inter-relationship that existed between indigenous motifs in painting and in photography. Within the framework of a project on visual culture in Mexico during the period between 1920 and 1950, she highlighted the benefits of a systematic compilation and analysis of reciprocal visual influences from painting, photography and architecture. At the workshop several doctoral candidates presented their projects and Mrs Dorotinsky commented on them in detail.

(Isis Fernandes Pinto, FU Berlin)

 

Workshop ‘Border Intersection and Signs of the Virgin of Guadalupe’ with Silvia Spitta (Dartmouth), October 6 and 7, 2010

The pivot of the workshop was Professor Spitta’s recently published book Misplaced Objects ( 2009). In a wide-ranging and highly interesting discussion, the author treated the problem of transculturation and the mestizaje from different angles, all of which served to illuminate various facets of the cultural relation between Mexico and the United States (or better, New Mexico) by considering its diverse artistic manifestations.

Each participating doctoral candidate presented a chapter of the book so as to afford a general view, on the basis of which the participants then jointly discussed the main ideas of the work. The advantage of the presence of Professor Spitta, who served as the mediator of her own ideas, enabled the participants to eliminate doubts and uncertainties that could not have otherwise been so easily treated.

A project, said Professor Spitta at the start of the workshop, should always be changing. This participant would like to say that that sentence changed the conception of my own project and opened the way for me to countless new possibilities and questions, for which stimulus I would like to thank Professor Spitta.

Finally, an idea that runs through Misplaced Objects is that of immigrants as pilgrims: the human being as a traveller that, wandering between cultures, moves between spaces.

(Lorena López Torres, FU Berlin)

 

Events in the coming month:

November 3, 2010, 6-8 pm, Latin American Institute, Room 214

Antonio Ibarra (UNAM), ‘Globalización y articulación comercial en Nueva España y el Río de la Plata en el siglo XVIII’

The Spanish Empire succeeded in establishing the territorially most extensive market of the modern era, thanks to a complex net of institutions and corporative actors that set up the traffic networks between Europe, America and isolated imperial possessions in Asia and Africa. Nevertheless, the decline of imperial sea power in the eighteenth century, accelerated by dynastic change and the growing importance of colonial agents, shaped the economic situation in the second phase of globalisation, which preceded the Industrial Revolution. The territorial units of Spanish-American trade were dominated by rival forces and determined the field of a new institutional grid of interests, which corporative agents followed, thereby forming trade consulates and groups that emphatically pressed for a free trade which was to be based on corporative privileges. Thus old corporative institutions equipped with new actors were to determine the conflict with imperial power, even if control over the silver and slave trade was the fundamental commercial nexus, both in New Spain and at the Río de la Plata. In this presentation, I shall examine the corporative mechanisms that enabled trade and the formation of territorial complexes and port facilities in the process of the globalisation of trade preceding the industrial transformation of the Atlantic economy in both hemispheres.

 

November 8, 9 and 12, 2010, Latin American Institute, Room 243

Seminar with Teresa Carbó (CIESAS, Mexico) 'On the Analysis of Verbal and Visual Texts. Concepts and Research Practices'

How do social scientists make descriptive and interpretive use of the never-ending process of the production and circulation of contextual meanings? How can this flow of significations in both verbal and visual materials be turned into relevant empirical data for focussed research projects? These are some of the questions that this seminar will address: from the design of relevant filters (cuts or ‘takes’) that allow the semiotic sphere to be segmented into discrete units, to the operations that allow those various texts to be put together into one relevant, complex object of systematic investigation. Sharing some research experiences and their conceptual itineraries for a useful heuristic treatment of naturally occurring texts, the seminar is aimed at honing the students’ analytic dispositions and capacities.

Assigned reading will be available on Blackboard.

Schedule: November 8, 2-5 pm ; November 9, 12-3 pm ; November 12, 10 am-1 pm

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

 

November 9, 2010, 6-8 pm, Latin American Institute, Room 201, Interdisciplinary Colloquium

Manuel Roberto Escobar (Mexico), “Cuerpo, poder y Resistencia.  El caso transgénero en México D. F. y Bogotá, Colombia”

 

November 16, 2010, 6-8 pm, Latin American Institute, Room 201, Interdisciplinary Colloquium

Laura Aguirre (Berlin), Title still to be announced

 

November 23, 2010, 6-8 pm, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Dorotheenstr. 65, Room 5.57 (5th floor, close to Friedrichstraße), Interdisciplinary Colloquium

Berit Callsen (Berlin), “Estéticas entre espacios. Traducciones culturales entre México y Francia”

 

November 30, 2010, 6-8 pm, Latin American Institute, Room 201, Interdisciplinary Colloquium

Javiera Cienfuegos (Berlin), “Conyugalidad transnacional: las posibilidades de una intimidad a distancia”

 

Concept of the Inter-Institutional Seminar:

Coordinated by: Teresa Carbó (CIESAS), Bernd Hausberger (El Colegio de México), Antonio Ibarra (UNAM) y Sherin Abu Chouka (FU Berlin)

Concept and Functions

The Seminar is conceived of as a space of academic integration and education for the graduate students of the IRTG. It will be a stable, multidisciplinary space that will enrich and broaden their research perspectives through systematic contacts with the Mexican professors. Students will find there a ‘safe haven’ in the complex process of a graduate research project. Theoretical and methodological doubts or difficulties during field or archive work will be dealt with there on a regular basis.

Besides this support function, the Seminar will provide academic education in the vast intellectual field covered by the IRTG, with its multiple aspects and associations between levels, spheres and scenes, by means of sessions that will be in charge of the Mexican professors.

Sessions: Frequency, Length and Subject matters

The meetings will take place approximately once a month. The physical place of the encounters will vary, depending on the lecturer, so that the students may get to know the different participant institutions, their libraries, laboratories and overall material as well as intellectual conventions.

Each session will be 4 (four) hours long and it will consist of two parts.The first part will be a standard academic seminar, which will deal with different topics chosen and prepared by the respective professors. They will give an introductory short lecture on these subjects, and the students are expected to participate in the ensuing discussion in an articulate and well-informed manner. Reading assignments will be provided in advance so that the main topics can be seriously dealt with in face-to-face encounters.The second part of the sessions will be devoted to the students’ presentations of advances in their research projects; a discussant will be provided for each, and the other students are also expected to participate. This is the time when specific or urgent issues of the ‘real life’ of the projects may be presented, in a concise fashion, for help and guidance from the professors.

Composition

All the professors on the Mexican side will participate in the monthly sessions, with the aim of realising the multidisciplinary conception of the IRTG, and for both the students’ and the professors’ benefit. It is our hope that these encounters will prove a satisfying and stimulating intellectual experience, and a cohesive one, for all of us who make up the complex and rich fabric of the Between Spaces (Entre Espacios) International Graduate Research Group.

 

Programme of the Inter-Institutional Seminar in Mexico:

November 8th, 2010, Lecturer: Bernd Hausberger, Centro de Estudios Históricos (CEH), El Colegio de México

Time: 16.00-18.00 PM, Place: To be announced

Title: Global History

Global History has become one of the most dynamic branches of historical investigation, but a specific methodology or theory is still missing. There are comparative, macro-regional and relational approaches. A quite vital distinction is the one of focus and scope: From what perspective and in which spatial framework should we observe and analyse historical phenomena? For example, was the industrial revolution the result of specific local or regional dynamics, or was it the local or regional concretisation of a wider global process? The session introduces global history approaches and examines their repercussions on the concepts of space in historical research.

Assigned readings: Mazlich, Bruce, ‘Comparing Global History to World History’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 28(3), 1998 (Winter), 385-95.; O’Flynn, Denis & Giraldez, Arturo, ‘Born again: Globalization’s Sixteenth Century Origins (Asian/Global versus European dynamic)’, Pacific Economic Review 13(3), 2008, 359-87.

Students’ Presentations (18.00-20.00 PM)

Moreno Chávez, José Alberto, ‘Religión, modernidad y conservadurismo. El papel de las redes culturales católicas transatlánticas (1850-1918)’

Bayardo Rodríguez, Lilia Estela, ‘Dimensiones del consumo moderno mexicano (1876-1952)’

Quintanar, Liana, ‘La gestión económico-administrativa de José Yves Limantour (1892-1911)’

Piltatowsky, Priscila, ‘Guerra, Estado, propaganda y censura: México 1942-1945’

 

You will find the whole programme of the Inter-Institutional Seminar on Blackboard and at our website.

 

New Guest Scholars at the IRTG during the coming month:

Prof. Dr. Antonio Ibarra

Antonio Ibarra is an economic historian whose work focuses not only on the emergence of markets, economic exchange, monetization processes and the emergence of financial institutions at the level of international comparison, but also on the social and cultural history of the state and financial elites. One of his current research projects examines the historical dimension of social networks and trade institutions in the Latin American world and the Philippines from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. His research ranges from the origin of monetary systems in Latin America to the phenomenon of political dissidence and civil disobedience in New Spain. Combining historical and economic sources, he is able to make a thorough analysis of current developments, particularly in terms of the connections of institutional changes and the reaction of companies, merchants and banks (from the nineteenth to the twentieth century). This interdisciplinary approach to and comparative perspective on the Spanish-speaking world connects the IRTG theme of remittances with the historical developments of a globally understood world.

Prof. Dr. Teresa Carbó

Teresa Carbó, a linguist, is a professor at CIESAS (Centre for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology) in Mexico City. She has studied extensively the verbal discourse of Mexican political elites through parliamentary, journalistic and other sorts of texts. She has been working for several years in visual analysis, mainly photography, as seen in association with historical, political and ideological processes in contemporary Mexico. She will be visiting the LAI-FU during the last two weeks of November.

 

Interview with our Guest Professors  Dr. Carlos Alba (IRTG) and Dr. Lorenza Villa Lever (desiguALdades); interviewer: Carlos A. Pérez Ricart

Question:

What distinguishes the International Research Training Group ‘Between Spaces’ and how does it differ from other academic exchange projects?

Dr. Alba Vega:

It is a highly innovative project, which enables interdisciplinary and international co-operation between professors and students. We believe it is a new kind of project that is dedicated to trans-disciplinary problems and increases the mobility of students. The Latin American students can make use of the incentive that already exists in Berlin, and also everything else the city has to offer. This sort of co-operation has not hitherto existed. As far as I know, it is the only project of its kind between Germany and Latin America.

Dr. Villa Lever:

I consider it particularly important that there is the possibility of working jointly on issues from the point of view of various disciplines, and to do so in various countries. This opens up job opportunities that are not otherwise easily obtained. It will encourage changes in academic life and also affect the understanding of how Germans and Mexicans lead the academic life, because each is informed by quite a different ethos and takes place within different institutions. The foundation of it all is learning from others, and I think no other project offers anything similar.

For the complete interview, please go to our website.

 

Newly selected Mexican scholarship holders:

José Antonio Brambila

Mr Brambila is studying Political Science in the programme of International Studies at the Colegio de México. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Sergio Aguayo, Mr Brambila is working on the right of communication, the concentration of Mexican media and their consequences for democracy. The title of his Masters project is ‘Television: The Right of Communication and the Consolidation of Democracy’. Beginning in October 2010, Mr Brambila will be a member of the IRTG and will soon visit Berlin.

Rúben Chávez Cruz

Mr Chávez Cruz is studying Political Science in the programme of International Studies at the Colegio de México. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Francisco Meyer Cosío, Mr Chávez Cruz is working on a comparative study of migration. The title of his Masters project is ‘Politic of Migration: A Comparative Study on the Migration between Mexico/ United States and Turkey/ Germany’. Beginning in October 2010, Mr Chávez Cruz will be a member of the IRTG and will soon visit Berlin.

Harlen Vega Soria

Mrs Harlen Vega Soria is studying Gender Studies in the programme of Sociological Studies at the Colegio de México. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Gabriela Cano, Mrs Vega is working on gender issues concerned with working conditions and the motherhood of women in the twentieth century. The title of her Masters project is ‘Gender, Labour Politics and Motherhood in the First Decades of the Twentieth century’. Beginning in October 2010, Mrs Vega Soria will be a member of the IRTG and will soon visit Berlin.

Lilia Esthela Bayardo Rodríguez

Mrs Bayardo is a historian in the programme of History Studies at the Colegio de México. Her doctoral dissertation treats the dimensions of modern consumerism. Its title is ‘Dimensions of Modern Mexican Consumerism, 1876-1952’. Mrs Bayardo is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

Iliana Quintanar

Mrs Quintanar is a historian in the programme of History Studies at the Colegio de México. Her doctoral dissertation treats economic administration during the period of the Profiriato. Its title is ‘The Strategies of Economic Administration of José Yves Limantour (1892-1911)’. Mrs Quintanar is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

Priscila Pilatowsky Goñi

Mrs Pilatowsky is a historian in the programme of History Studies at the Colegio de México. Her doctoral dissertation treats propaganda and censorship in the Mexican state. Its title is ‘War, State, Propaganda and Censorship in Mexico, 1942-1945’. Mrs Pilatowsky is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

Anna Susi

Mrs Susi is a Latin Americanist in the programme of Latin American Studies at the UNAM. Her doctoral dissertation treats self-representations of militants in Latin American guerrilla movements. Its title is ‘Self-Representation of the Militant Subject in Latin American Guerrilla Organizations’, Mrs Susi is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

Börries E. Nehe

Mr Nehe is a Latin Americanist in the programme of Latin American Studies at the UNAM. His doctoral dissertation treats class struggle and construction of the nation in Bolivia. Its title is ‘Tierra de nadie, tierra de todos. Class Struggle and Construction of State in the Period of Pluri-nationalism in Pando, Bolivia’. Mr Nehe is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

Evelyn Elenes

Mrs Elenes is a Latin Americanist in the programme of Latin American Studies at the UNAM. Her doctoral dissertation treats conditions and representations of infra-human living conditions of people on the streets of Mexico-City. Its title is ‘Aesthetics of Poverty’. Mrs Elenes is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

Mirna Yazmin Estrella Vega

Mrs Vega is a Latin Americanist in the programme of Latin American Studies at the UNAM. Her doctoral dissertation treats impact of feminine migration in Central America. Its title is ‘Impact of Feminine Migration in Central America: The Experience of Return to El Salvador and Honduras’. Mrs Vega is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

Selen Catalina Arango Rodríguez

Mrs Arango Rodríguez has studied and worked in the programme of Gender Studies at the UNAM. Her doctoral dissertation treats feminine literature in Colombia and Mexico. Its title is ‘Formation of the Feminine in Colombia and Mexico: A Comparative study of Feminine Formation through the Analysis of Four Novels’. Mrs Arango is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

Stephanie Brewster Ramírez

Mrs Brewster Ramírez is studying communication in the Faculty of Political Science at the UNAM. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ana Goudman, Mrs Brewster is working on the cinema as a social space with its own cinematographic production. The title of her Masters project is ‘Cinema as Social Space and Cinematographic Creation’. Beginning in October 2010, Mrs Brewster Ramírez will be a member of the IRTG and will soon visit Berlin.

Lizbeth Pérez Tejada Munguía

Mrs Pérez Tejada is studying at the Institute of Social Investigations at the UNAM. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Irma Eréndira Sandoval Ballesteros, Mrs Pérez Tejada is working on strategies against corruption in state administration. The title of her Masters project is ‘Studies of Public Politics in Combating Administrative Corruption in Mexico, 2000-2010’. Beginning in October 2010, Mrs Pérez Tejada will be a member of the IRTG and will soon visit Berlin.

Mónica Toledo Gonzalez

Mrs Toledo González is a social anthropologist at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS). Her doctoral dissertation treats political strategies on housework in Mexico. Its title is ‘Global Treaties and Socio-Political Strategies on House Work in Mexico: Between Isolation and Invisibility in the Public Sphere’. Mrs Toledo Gonzalez is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

Luisa Fernanda Rodríguez

Mrs Rodríguez is a social anthropologist at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS). Her doctoral dissertation treats social exclusion and the perception of citizenship in the poor neighbourhood of Iztapalapa. Its title is ‘Practice of Citizenship in the Context of Social Exclusion: Two Social Organisations in Iztapalapa, Mexico-City’. Mrs Rodríguez is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

Nimbe Montserrat Algarabel Rutter

Mrs Algarabel is a social anthropologist at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS). Her doctoral dissertation treats censorship in the Mexican cinema. Its title is ‘Subversion, Transgression and Otherness: Analytical Reconstruction of Discourses of Censorship and the Scandal of Mexican Cinema (1968-2002)’. Mrs Algarabel is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

José Alberto Moreno Chávez

Mr Moreno Chávez is a historian at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS). His postdoctoral project treats transatlantic Catholic networks and their importance in the nineteenth century. Its title is ‘Religion, Modernity and Conservatism: The Role of Catholic Cultural Transatlantic Networks (1850-1918)’. Mr Chávez Moreno is expected at the IRTG in Berlin sometime in the coming months.

 

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

 

Best wishes

Ingrid Simson and her team