Guest Lecturer to Discuss Narratives of Latin American Women's Lives
This week, the Department of English Language and Literature is hosting a lecture by RoseAnna Mueller, associate professor of Spanish, Italian and humanities in the Department of Humanities, History and Social Sciences at Columbia College Chicago. She served as humanities coordinator from 1996 to 1999 and is currently director of the Women's and Gender Studies program at the college.
Dr. Mueller's talk, entitled "Women Narrating Latin American Women's Lives," is based on Venezuelan author Teresa de la Parra's "Three Lectures: Women's Influence in the Formation of the American Soul" (1930), which described the important roles women played during the conquest, colonial and independence eras in Latin America. De la Parra believed that women's history had yet to be written and that as a public intellectual she owed it to her audience to inform them of the contributions women had made to Latin America's history and how they were poised to contribute to its future.
The lecture by Dr. Mueller will also examine more recent ways of documenting women's lives. One of these is "testimonio," which gives voice to individuals previously marginalized by virtue of class, gender or race. It can thus document the lives of "ordinary" women struggling with these issues as well as with economic and patriarchal life circumstances. Another way to narrate women's lives is through film, a notable example being the work of Argentinian filmmaker María Luisa Bemberg.
Dr. Mueller's talk will take place on Wednesday, April 3 in C-Block Auditorium at 5:40 p.m. For more information, please contact elit@bilkent.edu.tr.