Graduate Student Seminar Series
Spring 2000

The Border and Transcultural Studies Research Circle held a seminar series in the spring of 2000 in which graduate students had the opportunity to present their research in border and transcultural studies. Each seminar featured two graduate students, working on related topics but in different geographical regions or historical periods or through varying disciplinary approaches. They presented papers or works-in-progress, followed by discussion.

Designed to place students in contact with a network of others working on similar issues, to provide a forum for interdisciplinary work, and to give graduate students an opportunity to present papers in an informal setting, the seminar series fostered discussion of cultural studies in global context among students from departments and programs across campus. Graduate students researching such issues from any disciplinary perspective were invited to participate.

Broadly imagined, BTCS includes the examination of intercultural sites of hybridity produced by cultural and commercial traffic, migration, nomadism, diaspora, and cyberspace, and an exploration of the broad borderlands where cultures blend and clash, collide and collude. We also encourage the transgression of disciplinary boundaries in the academy, hoping to establish a dialogue in which participants draw on disciplinary knowledge without being limited to it, and we welcome interdisciplinary projects.

Format: Presentations took the form or either papers or talks and were either a broad description of a large project, an excerpt from such a project, or a shorter work. Presenters were instructed to limit their presentations to about 30-40 minutes, to allow time for the other presenter and for discussion.

When: The series took place on the afternoon of the first Saturday of each month, from 4:00-6:00 p.m., beginning February 5, 2000 and ending on April 1, 2000.

How: The Graduate Student Organizational Committee issued an open call for seminar presenters to submit a brief abstract of their research.

Graduate Student Organizational Committee: Kiko Benitez, Comparative Literature;
Dana Lightstone, Languages and Cultures of Asia; Marissa Lopez, English; Kristin Pitt, Comparative Literature.

Seminars:

Shifting Identities, Shifting Geographies , Saturday, February 5, 2000
Marissa Lopez , English: "Disuniting La Raza: Hegel, Aztlan, and Chicano Subjectivity"
Karen A. Peters , Ethnomusicology: "Representations of Macedonia in Contemporary Ethnopop Songs from Southwest Bulgaria"

Mapping Postcolonial Identities , Saturday, April 1, 2000
anupama jain , English and Women's Studies: "Hybrid Bildungs by Meena Alexander, Bharati Mukherjee, and Bapsi Sidhwa: South Asian Women Re-Write the American Novel."
Dana Lightstone , Languages and Cultures of Asia: "Under an Evil Star: Women of the Piramillai Kallar Community of Tamil Nadu."