2pm – Graduate Student Showcase
The showcase is an excellent opportunity for graduate students to present their research and receive feedback from senior scholars in their fields.
Moderated by Abigale Balbale (New York Univeristy) featuring short paper presentations by Isabel Murcia Estrada (Stony Brook University), Annemarie Iker (Princeton University), Andres Olmedo Orejuela (CUNY Graduate Center), and Juan Gabriel Ramírez Bolívar (New York University).
To register for this event: CLICK HERE.
Isabel Murcia Estrada (Stony Brook University)
“Asociacionismo femenino: la comunidad intelectual de las mujeres españolas de principios del siglo XX”
*Registered attendees can access this password protected paper here. Please do not distribute or circulate.*
Abstract:
En una tesis sobre las redes biográficas e intelectuales entre Rosa Chacel, Concha Méndez, Concha de Albornoz y María Zambrano, este segundo capítulo explica el contexto en que dichas redes se gestaron. A finales del XIX y durante el primer tercio del XX en España se produjo un auge del asociacionismo vinculado con el krausismo, que concebía la sociedad como red de asociaciones, un conjunto armónico y orgánico. Este capítulo analiza el concepto de asociación referido a la comunidad intelectual de mujeres de principios de siglo, cuya aplicación práctica dio lugar a la creación de instituciones como la Residencia de Señoritas o el Lyceum-Club femenino. El asociacionismo que estaba en la base de dichas instituciones nació de la voluntad de generar una comunidad de cooperación femenina para la educación y formación de la mujer, así como para la creación de espacios femeninos de diálogo. Estudiar la filosofía inherente a dicho asociacionismo servirá para entender las relaciones y las redes creadas a partir de estas instituciones.
Consecuencia de la situación de la mujer en esa época y heredero de los debates decimonónicos en torno a la idea de hermandad o fraternidad femenina, el capítulo propone definir las comunidades intelectuales femeninas a través del concepto de sororidad como forma especial de relación entre las escritoras y las creadoras de principios del XX. Con la mirada puesta en la propuesta de Unamuno en su prólogo a La tía Tula y en el concepto de comunidad desarrollado por la filósofa española Marina Garcés, la sororidad de las intelectuales de esos años planteada aquí se constituye como acción colectiva donde la pluralidad femenina se organiza en un movimiento horizontal de intercambio y de diálogo.
Respondents:
- Ana Fernández Cebrián (Columbia University)
- Leslie Harkema (Baylor University)
Annemarie Iker (Princeton University)
“Events, Ephemera, and Secrecy in the Art of Santiago Rusiñol and the Catalan Modernistes”
*Registered attendees can access this password protected paper here. Please do not distribute or circulate.*
Abstract:
Can an artwork keep a secret? This question fascinated Santiago Rusiñol (1861—1931) and the Catalan modernistes, a group of artists, writers, designers, and architects active in turn-of-the-century Barcelona. My dissertation examines the form and function of secrecy in modernista paintings, drawings, prints, plays, poems, essays, buildings, and—as I hope to discuss at the KJCC Graduate Student Showcase—live art. In chapter four of my dissertation, I study artistic performances and social gatherings held at two modernista establishments: Cau Ferrat, in Sitges, and Els Quatre Gats, in Barcelona. Throughout the chapter, I argue that the modernistes turned to performances and gatherings in the early 1890s in order to consolidate their movement: events, they realized, could encourage aesthetic experimentation and creative solidarity by constricting the audience for and the afterlife of their art. But by the late 1890s, modernista events generated large crowds and elaborate ephemera. This development attests to the competing imperatives at work in modernisme. Rusiñol and his colleagues used the immediacy and transience of events to nurture a fledgling movement, yet put these same qualities to different uses as modernisme grew in size and prominence. Ultimately, I propose that Rusiñol and his colleagues experienced conflicting impulses toward revelation and concealment, and inclusion and exclusion. By attending to these conflicting impulses through the analysis of events and related ephemera, I offer new insights into the practice, theory, and reception of Catalan modernisme, as well as the modernity from which this movement emerged and to which it contributed.
Respondents:
- Jeffrey Coleman (Northwestern University)
- Leigh Mercer (University of Washington)
Andres Olmedo Orejuela (CUNY Graduate Center)
“Mirar por dentro: Self-Knowledge and Introspection in Gracián”
Abstract:
“I know neither who I am, nor who gave me being, nor why it was given to me. So many times in silence I questioned myself about it, as ignorant as I am curious!” So begins the novel El Criticón, with the character Andrenio lamenting his ignorance of himself. For readers familiar with the works of Balthasar Gracián–author of The Hero, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, and other landmarks of the Spanish Baroque–Andrenio’s lack of self-knowledge is a recognizable part of a project. Nourished by a confluence of Ancient sources, Gracián urged the pursuit of self-knowledge, citing the inscription above the oracle at Delphos, in everything he wrote. Gracián also felt the influence of Neostoicism and a shift in writing style during the late Renaissance, especially the model of Tacitus. But Gracián’s works not only encourage one to discover meaning beyond the appearances of others, but, far more significantly for my dissertation, to analyze one’s self too–mirar por dentro. In this chapter I argue that effective control of representations of the self, which Gracián champions in his concise works, reveals the self to be double, itself and another. In his novel, a synthesis of earlier writing, Gracián adds a surprising twist: in the ceaseless regime of self-examination and search for self-knowledge required to control the self, Andrenio and Critilo nevertheless find that error and misprision repeat again and again, so that either there is nothing to be learned about oneself or self-knowledge remains essentially suspended, indefinitely out of reach.
Respondents:
- Nicholas R. Jones (Yale University)
- Victor Sierra Matute (Baruch, CUNY)
Juan Gabriel Ramírez Bolívar (NYU)
“The Pan-Hispanic Ideals of Two Murals”
Abstract:
The first chapter of this dissertation will analyze and contrast the mural paintings La Unión de América Latina (1924) by Roberto Montenegro, and La Apotéosis de Popayán (1935-1955) by Efraim Martínez. It will study how these artworks engage with Pan-Hispanic ideals circulating among Spanish and Latin American intellectuals at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this chapter, I argue that these two murals served as vehicles to bring the Pan-Hispanic ideals of the political elites into the eyes and minds of their respective audience. Montenegro made La Unión de América Latina for the Biblioteca Iberoamericana at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City. In contrast, Martínez made La Apóteosis de Popayán at the auditorium of the Universidad de Caldas in Popayán, Colombia. Both murals depicted scenes of nationhood influenced by an idealized view of the role of Spain in the construction of Mexican and Colombian societies. They depict scenes of a common identity and present a heroic intervention of Spaniards in the Americas, where the colonizers appear as givers of civilization, language, and religion. The male Spaniard and white criollos appear as the creators of the nation-state and the first citizens of multiple Latin American countries, while they represent indigenous and female characters as allegories of the nation, the land, or as muses. Never as political members of those countries. Additionally, it will elucidate the impact of this ideology on each mural’s immediate public. Finally, I will explain how these images, which at first glance seem harmonious, reveal narratives of gender, racial, and ethnic hierarchical orders.
Respondents:
- Guisela Latorre (Ohio State University)
- Jordana Mendelson (New York University)