Forum on
Trans-Atlantic Explorations
A forum on "Trans-Atlantic explorations" took place
at Brown University, April 9, 1999, with colleagues from a number
of universities. This is a summary of the contributions:
Julio Ortega (Brown):
Trans-Atlantic studies is a new area of inquiry that focuses
on difference and heterogeneity in a period of intense globalization.
It explores the need for transdisciplinarity and cross-departmental
conversation. It looks to move beyond the limits and fatigue
of departmental monologues.
Djelal Kadir (Inter-American Studies
Chair Professor; chair of Comparative Literature at Penn State):
A Project on Trans-Atlantic Studies should be part of the current
effort to open new spaces within the American Civilization’s
old monological model. It coincides with UPenn’s Council
on Inter-American Literary Cultures as well as with the School
of Theory in the Humanities in Santiago de Compostela, both
ongoing cross-departmental and international organizations for
studies of the current cultural, linguistic and ethnic heterogeneity.
Beatriz Pastor (Dartmouth College):
After teaching in the departments of Spanish, Comparative Literature,
and Latin American Studies, and team-teaching on Science and
the Humanities, she would like to explore the convergence of
language and culture, linking Spain, the U.S., and Latin America.
Her focus would be the political dimension of such an inquiry.
Migration and Latino studies should be the central topic to
start this new approach.
Alicia Borinsky (Chair, Latin American
Studies, Boston University): Thanks to the Mellon Foundation,
her Seminar on the Americas is in its third year. It has been
dedicated to exile and literature and it has included some interactions
among Europe, the U.S., and Latin America. It will now move
on into topics on memory and displacement, and writing across
borders. This Seminar was originated in collaboration with colleagues
from Brown and Harvard.
Paul Julian Smith (Chair, Department
of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Cambridge):
The main difference between Spanish departments in the U.S.
and the U.K. is that in the U.K. faculty usually teaches literature
from both Spain and Latin America. Cambridge and Brown already
have a productive exchange project in trans-Atlantic topics.
Latin American and Spanish cultural studies have common but
also diverse theoretical and practical issues to deal with.
José Luis Vega (Dean of Humanities,
Universidad de Puerto Rico): One of the leading trans-Atlantic
figures of Hispanism in Puerto Rico was Federico de Onís,
an exiled Spaniard who lived in Puerto Rico and New York and
was crucial in defining the area of Hispanic Studies. He also
was one of the first to put together Spanish and Latin American
poetry as part of a common tradition. His example stands beyond
borders.
Jose Antonio Mazzotti (Romance Languages,
Harvard University): Colonial literature proves to be
determinant in the notion of a Latin American subject made in
trans-Atlantic as well as inter-American migration. This exploration
should also include the trans-Pacific experience as complementary
field.
Blanca Silvestrini (History, University
of Connecticut): Historians have discovered that national
narratives should be placed in larger contexts in order to be
better understood. XIX Century Puerto Rican history has to be
situated in the Latin American context. Slavery is not only
a Caribbean case but a Trans-Atlantic trade within our modernity.
Alexis Márquez Rodríguez
(President, Monte Ávila Publishers, Caracas):
We need to discuss also the critical situation of the book in
the trans-Atlantic interaction, that is, it’s unique situation
of marginal history in front of the editorial production of
the metropolis, as well as the need to support a larger network
of communication in the Hispanic world.
Jorge Pinto (Ambassador, Consul General
of México in New York): The Web, the Internet,
today’s instant communication and available information,
have transformed the trans-Atlantic routes in a temporal, not
only spatial, reality. Still few users are taking advantage
of the Internet in the Latin American world; but the technology
of communication is a growing reality that will demand from
us a role in its larger map.
Carlos Fuentes (Brown): Multidisciplinary
communication in Latin America was made possible by the Spanish
exiled after the Civil War. In Mexico, modernity was first a
dialogue advanced by Spaniards who were capable of moving beyond
constraints, into an open field of communication. Brown University
could be a new center of debate and dialogue for the current
international nature of a culture produced from the margins.
Women, minorities, migrants, and the post-colonial are part
of the new space of creativity that comes back to the centers
in order to transform and recreate them.
