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Fourth Annual CISA Student Symposium

(Go to the main Student Symposium page)

Saturday April 21, 2001 Amherst College Welcome: Dale Peterson, Amherst College Professor of English and Russian Robert Schwartzwald, UMass Amherst Professor of French and Italian Director, Crossroads in the Study of the Americas Session I: Living Between Worlds: States of Exile Moderator: Dale Peterson, Amherst College Professor of English and Russian Janira Bonilla, Smith College "Consciousness Through Exile: Dominican and Haitian Perspectives" - Exile influences the work of contemporary Dominican and Haitian writers, permitting new modes of representation that would not be possible in their homelands. Both a liberating and often painful experience, the condition of exile provides writers with a double perspective that broadens their critical view of the homeland and the rest of the world. As a result, Haitian and Dominican authors writing in exile reflect a critical national consciousness rooted in a political and cultural awareness that transcends nationalist rhetoric. Sasha Senderovich, UMass Amherst "An (ex-Soviet) Russian Jew in America: Exile, Emigration and the Problems of Identity" - "All immigrants and exiles know the peculiar restlessness of an imagination that can never again have faith in its own absoluteness. Because I have learned the relativity of cultural meanings on my skin, I can never take any one set of meanings as final," Eva Hoffman writers in Lost in Translation. In this memoir I will explore the multiplicity of ways in which my new identity -- that of an émigré in America, is constructed (or, rather, is being constructed). I will address the issues of confusion that a great magnitude of sub-identities, of a Russian, an ex-Soviet, a Jew, contribute to my perception of America, as well as a certain degree of homogeneity inflicted on me as an émigré. I will explore the perception of America I had while still living in Russia, as well as the perception I have of my Russianness and Jewishness now that I live in the United States. Session II: "Crosswalks": New Concepts of Community Moderator: Eric Schocket, Hampshire College Assistant Professor of American Literature Patricia Miller, Hampshire College "'An Endless Unpaved Road': So far from God Complicates Culture, Identity and National Legends Framed by cultural critic Michael Shaprio's concepts of national legends and the political power of narratives of national identity, this paper discusses the ways in which Ana Castillo's novel So Far From God serves to redefine both American identity and American literature. Castillo reinvents the genre of the Western with her story of the immediate, extended and metaphorical family of Sofia, a strong-willed yet nurturing matriarch in a Latino community of rural new Mexico. Discussion of the novel focuses on the ways in which it addresses the contradictory reality of colonization and cohabitation, the ideologies of racism, classism, and sexism as they relate to life on the border, and the political power of language in both identity formation and political policy. Castillo's literary technique and style are examined as an effort to (re)write an American grammar that challenges existing and exclusive nationalistic definitions of identity by seamlessly incorporating English and Spanish into the prose and highlighting a notion of shared, rather than rigidly regulated, cultural spaces. The ironic tone and high drama of the novel are also considered in relation to its political implications and treatment of the dominant national legends of exclusion to which Shapiro refers. Castillo's text is offered as a new version of these powerful legends that simultaneously underscores the conflicts present in a transcultural identity and exposes the cultural encounters that form life on the border as sites of reinvention and opportunity, rather than opposition and alienation. By complicating American identity with stories of cultural and linguistic mixing, Castillo challenges the literary traditions that have served to construct "Americans" as a static and homogeneous category. Through its particular language and content, So Far from God calls for a new imagining of these political, social, and historical categories and provides one model with which to begin that work. L. Burke Murphy, Smith College "Staying Near the Patron Saint: Concepts of Community" - It involves two bus rides from Oaxaca to reach the Zapotec village of Diaz Ordaz in the Central Valley of Oaxaca. Unique circumstances allowed me to enter the lives of the six Santos sisters and their families, who together stand as a microcosm of the community, reflecting patterns of intergenerational change. A majority of the grown children of three of the sisters are living in Los Angeles, like so many other families of the village. Juggling the responsibilities of those at home and afar is integral to family life. Very slowly I began to realize that the community did not consider those living in Los Angeles lost. Rather, Diaz Ordaz was populated by 'transnational families.' In my paper I will talk about the way this village challenged my preconceived ideas of community, and what I, as an outsider, could understand about living in this town. At the center of my work is a genealogical analysis, a "project of legibility" in which I sought to transform personal histories into a kinship study. This analysis allowed me to realize changing gender roles and migration patterns, yet many aspects of family life could not be captured in this model. For instance, the patterns did not reveal the community's shifting notion of itself. Families stretched across national boundaries, and the community's imagined-identity included those living in California, Texas and elsewhere. This community, in reality and in imagining itself, crosses national boundaries and is inclusive of Zapotec traditions. Aimee Koch, Amherst College "New York City: Through the Lens" - The crosswalks of New York are the crosswalks of the Americas. Each city block is a comment on class, race, ethnicity, gender or culture. The Big Apple is actually sliced in many different directions and shared by many different people. When my parents moved to Long Island two years ago, I was awed by the opportunity to get my own taste of the city. This year, I have made several trips into New York City, walking through different neighborhoods with pockets full of film. Having shot nearly two dozen rolls of New York, and anticipating more shooting opportunities, I am collaborating images that move me into an exhibition which would show my eye in those crosswalks. I want to tell stories behind the image and to let the viewer fill in the blanks with their own stories. New York asks you to be both separate and together -- alone and a part of the crowd. That is a theme that runs throughout the social spectrum and begs to be questioned and considered. I hope to ask those questions with images, to ask the viewers not only to look, but ot imagine the stories behind the images, and then to tell their own stories. I hope they will walk away from my mixing old ideas with new ones, questioning what it means to think of the crosswalks of New York as the crossroads of the Americas. Session III: "No es Facil" (Video Screening) Moderator: Ginetta E.B. Cadelaria, Smith College Assistant Professor of Sociology and Latin American and Latino/a Studies Bobby Farlice-Rubio, Amherst College '00 "No es Facil" - "No es "facil" is a result of my lifelong struggle to reconcile my heritage as a Cuban born in the United States. The hour-long video begins with an introduction to my family and my hometown of Hialeah, Florida, a predominantly Cuban city near Miami. Carefully editing interviews are woven into an account of my community's life in exile and the reasons for having fled Cuba. These stories are the ones that shaped my childhood perceptions of our nearby, yet prohibitively distant homeland. In an effort to "see it for myself," I traveled to my mother's place of birth, Guines Cuba (for the first time in my life!) where I stayed with family for 21 days in the summer of 2000. The middle part of the video presents the many Guineros's perspectives on their daily life under the "Revolution." The last section is my attempt to create a dialogue between Cubans and their US counterparts in order to address the difficult issues faced by this bifurcated nation. Session IV: Reconstructing Lives and Bodies Moderator: Robert Schwartzwald, UMass Amherst Professor of French and Italian Ellen Wiewel, Smith College "Some Constructions and Deconstructions of Canadian Blackness" - Blacks have been in Canada since the earlier invasions by the French and the larger populations arrived from the British colonies at the time of the American Revolution, sometimes as slaves but often as free people. Because "slave importation" was prohibited in Upper Canada in 1793, many more US blacks crossed the northern border before the Civil War to escape from slavery. The legacies of these black pioneers, the complex relationship between the US and Canada, and state denials of slavery shape Blackness in Canada today. This presentation will address the further influx of Blacks from the Caribbean, which includes recruitment of Caribbean women to work as domestics. I also discuss activism, the establishment of Black studies, and senses of Canadian belonging that coexist with disaporic notions of being from multiples places and times. I will connect this to the official construction of Canada as a multicultural nation since 1988. Becky Yi, Smith College "The Effects of Project C.I.T.Y. on the Korean American Teenage Girls of Northern Queens " Cole Kravitz, Smith College "Queering the US National Body: Interrogating the Characterization of Anybodys in 'West Side Story'" - Utilizing clips from the musical film 'West Side Story,' my work will attempt to articulate how the absence and presence of Anybodys (as both plural and possessive (Anybody's) depending upon the script employed) as a white racialized, gendered subject, is both foreclosed and sanctioned. In a film about borders, crossing, multiple-crossings, and national identities, there is a constant policing of citizenship, belonging, femininity, masculinity, and criminality, all of which are racialized through the bodies of the Puerto Rican men and women. This requires a multi-layered assessment of the ways in which bodies are observed and witnessed throughout the musical film, and opens up possibilities for further readings that incite and jar upon the multiple boundaries and polarities that are constructed throughout the film. Session V: Performed Identities Moderator: Sunaina Maira, UMass Amherst Assistant Professor of English Zoe Klein, Hampshire College "Performance and Identity: Artists Bill T. Jones, Bebe Miller, and Ralph Lemon Reinvent New Kinds of Looking on the American Stage" - What is "Black Dance?" Who is a "Black Artist?" There is a powerful shift happening in contemporary performance in the 1990s by artists who happen to be black, having to do with an artist's intent and content. Such a shift of focus draws attention to the individual story (not a representation of a culture's story) and is a growing attractive performance aesthetic. As we leave the 1990s the question of black identity on the concert stage is more often needing to be renegotiated by a shift from the paradigm of 'art for art's sake' to one of 'identity politics.' In my presentation, I will show screenings and reveal the unique choreographic process for the Geography Trilogy, contemporary work by Ralph Lemon, along with work by Bebe Miller and Bill T. Jones. Each struggles to communicate the individual experience within different employments of narrative identity in order to ask of those who gaze, 'can you help me stretch your perceptions of me and who you think I represent?' I want to bring attention to the variety of strategies employed by these artists to refocus, redefine, rechallenge and reinvent a new understanding of their blackness on the concert stage. I will also expand on the relationship between performance and identity through the example of my own Division III thesis choreography as I bring issues of race and questions of belonging as a Colombian adoptee to the Hampshire College dance stage. The goal is my presentation is to communicate that there is a constant dialogue between those who "are" (artists) and those who "analyze" (critics). Through it they teach one another about how identity can't be "represented" but can be "renegotiated" through live performance. When art is used as anthropology, our questions can lead to change. Art will help us discover those questions. Rafael Flores, UMass Amherst "The Cuban Son: In Disguise'" - In 1947 the great Cuban ethnologist Fernando Ortiz presented his theory of 'transculturation,' that Cuban culture is a shared achievement of uprooted peoples, principally European and African peoples. There is possibly no other element of Cuban culture that exemplifies Ortiz' theory of 'transculturation' better than the music of Cuba (with the possible exception of the sugar and tobacco plantations of Cuba). Cuban popular music can be categorized into four styles: rumba, danzon, cancion, and son. While this may be an oversimplification, it is certainly not a factual stretch to call these four styles the most influential genres in Cuban popular music. Of these four Cuban popular music genres, the son has had the most far-reaching influence. Son as a descriptive title is generic and elastic. Much like the term jazz or blues, son describes types of music that range from the concrete and the specific to the ambiguous and inclusive. To this end, the son has either fused with or influenced almost every Cuban musical genre and has extended that influence far beyond Cuba. In my paper, I attempt to show this influence as it related to the other musical genres of the Caribbean (including Cuba) and the United States. Medb McGearty "Exploring the Complexities of American Identity Through Dance'" - American identity is never fixed or static, but is woven from threads that are diverse and varying. Inevitably, cultures collide with one another and result in a fusion by which each culture, ideally, retains its individual characteristics while incorporating elements from others. Many American artists searching to define themselves struggle with the fact that as a result of this fusion process, cultural delineations become difficult or even impossible to make. Do they need to be made? Rather than perpetuate American's separatist notions of identity, I propose looking at American national identity through ever changing cultural influences that overlap, fold and collapse into one another. The site of investigation for this proposal is the body, on which we read culture. How can we re-inscribe these histories and cultural retentions into our nation's identity? How can we reverse the historical whitening of an ever increasingly brown America? My interest in this subject originated in my research of jazz dance, where I uncovered a history that is often missing from performance studies. I began to reinvestigate American culture through the invisibilized Africanist influence. How does my experience as a dancer and an American reflect this history? I wanted to explore my relationship to these issues. I decided to investigate the story of my great grandmother, an aspect of my family history that was vague. Within the complexity of my great-grandmother's story, I will extricate the influence of the African Diaspora on American dance in relation to her influence on my family's identity, recognizing that every American's identity is more complex than it appears. I will try to negotiate a new history that acknowledges the presence of Africanist retention in American national identity.