American Corner Innsbruck
Talk by Prof Marion Christina Rohleitner on „Queering Azthán: Key Terms and Current Trends in Chichana/o Literature and Art
Monday, October 20, 2014, 10.15 am, HS 3, Humanities Building
Prof Rohleitner is currently guest lecturer at the University of Innsbruck, her alma mater. She received her PhD at the University of Notre Dame in 2007 and is now based in El Paso, Texas where she works as an Associate Professor of English and teaches American literature with a focus on Chichana/o, Latina/o and Caribbean diasporic fiction, as well as postcolonial and queer theory.
The talk she held prepared for the listeners this time was a kind of mixture of various parts of her field of expertise. After briefly introducing some key terms in Chichana/o Studies, such as Aztlán, the border (also called la fontera), and mastizaje, she fochused on two major trends in current Chichana/ literary and cultural studies: the visual reappropriation of three central female icons in Mexican and Mexican American culture – La Malinche, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and la Llorona – to illustrate queering practices and the increasing popularity of science fiction and speculative fiction and how these allow to critically comment on U.S. immigration policy and neoliberal globalization. Prof Rohleitner used various media, such as sound, pictures, and filmclips for example form the well known TV series “Breaking Bad” to exemplify her points, which made it an interesting, interactive, easy to follow presentation for the members of faculty and students present.
The ACI hopes to get a cooperation with Professor Rohleitner and some schools up and running, as she will be a frequent visitor the next couple of years.
