Center for InterAmerican Studies

COLLOQUIUM INFORMATION for Tuesday, June 20th 2023: Marjorie Agosín’s Poetic Voice of Hope and Resistance: An Anocritical Reading. Roberta Maierhofer (CIAS, Universität Graz)

By defining the field as a way of thinking and an approach to transcend cultural, political, and historical boundaries, Inter-American Studies offers an understanding of academia itself as in flux. Accepted boundaries of time and space as well as of language and culture – both in Europe and the Americas – are questioned, thus encouraging new structures of thought. A redefinition of research areas away from national connotations towards regional (hemispheric) denotations offer unexpected discoveries of similarities and differences. By applying the theoretical lens of anocriticism, Marjorie Agosín’s book A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile (1995/2022) can be read as a ‘narrative presence’, where an otherwise untold family history is remembered and recreated as a unique experience of past lives with implications for the present and future. Similar to the scripted recollections of her mother, Agosín uses the process of writing not to establish a chronological documentary, but to create a hopeful voice of poetic resistance to established modes of perception.

We are cordially inviting you to participate in our next IAS colloquium on Tuesday, June 20th, from 18 to 20hrs (CET). Room: X-E1-201 // ¡Lxs invitamos cordialmente a participar en nuestro próximo coloquio, el martes 20 de junio de 18 a 20hrs (CET)! Salón: X-E1-201