Latin American Women's Voices Come Alive in Lecture at Bilkent
By Yeşim Kurşunlu (ELIT/IV)
Last week, on April 3, the Department of English Language and Literature presented a lecture by Assoc. Prof. RoseAnna Mueller of the Department of Humanities, History and Social Sciences at Columbia College Chicago.
Dr. Mueller traveled from Chicago to speak on the topic "Women Narrating Latin American Women's Lives" and provided Bilkent students with a fresh perspective on Latin American literature. First, she discussed Venezuelan author Teresa de la Parra's "Three Lectures: Women's Influence in the Formation of the American Soul" (1930), which described women's contributions to Latin American history.
Following this, Dr. Mueller turned to an examination of an important literary genre, "testimonio," which allows women excluded from society because of class, race and gender distinctions to have a public voice. She provided an overview of melodramatic testimonies by Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala), Domitila de Chungarra (Bolivia) and Reyita de los Santos (Cuba), in which three upper-middle- class women depict the harsh lives of three ordinary women.
Finally, Dr. Muller talked about the use of filmmaking to narrate women's lives, focusing in particular on two works by the Argentinian filmmaker María Luisa Bemberg. "Yo, la peor de todas" is about the life of the colonial Mexican nun and intellectual Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, while the movie "Camila" tells the dramatic story of Camila O'Gorman, who fights against her family and society to be with her lover.
At the end of the seminar, a lively discussion took place, with contributions and questions from many members of the large and enthusiastic audience. Among the topics raised were magical realism, postmodernism and postcolonial literature. Students who attended called Dr. Mueller's lecture "fantastic," saying it inspired them with new interest in Latin American women writers.