PORTULANO 3

– Vol. 1 No. 3

Dear Readers,

Welcome to Portulano, a journal of arts and literature published by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Middlebury College. The Portulano project began in 2012 thanks to the hard work of its founding editors, Mario Portugal and Roberto Pareja. Since its very beginning, Portulano has provided a space to publish essays by students at different levels of language learning who wish to explore various topics, including language, culture, literature, linguistics, and cultural studies. This third volume and the previous ones combine diverse genres: creative and academic writing (specifically studies on linguistic themes, literary criticism, and cultural analysis), as well as essays, autobiographical texts, and other types of discourse.

Portulano 3 features a stronger presence of students focusing on the Lusophone world. This shows a growing interest in the Portuguese language at Middlebury, something we owe to our excellent professors: Fernando Rocha, Mario Higa, and Daniel Silva. Thanks to them, many of our students are graduating with a level of Portuguese that allows them to be competitive in the job market.

Alla Fil, Felipe Q. Quintanilla, Daniel Silva, and Luis H. Castañeda are part of Portulano’s editorial board this year. Their effort and dedication have made this issue a valuable document that brings together works by students of Spanish and Portuguese. This year the journal is organized following different themes, among them: otherness, bildungsroman narratives, revolution and genre, film, postnational identities, and poetry and eroticism. Most of these essays were written within courses offered by the Spanish and Portuguese department.

I wish to thank each and every one of the students participating in this issue, the professors who were a part of the editorial board, and those who inspired their students to read and dig dipper in a host of issues and problems. I also want to express my gratitude to our dear Felipe Q. Quintanilla for his special editorial work.

Enjoy Spring and reading Portulano!

Patricia Saldarriaga
Professor of Spanish
Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese

 

 

THE SELF IN MOVEMENT

This section is comprised of works, both poetic and essayistic, that interrogate notions of subjectivity and selfhood in new ways. Individual identity, rather than a monolithic and stable entity, is approached in these works as necessarily ambivalent and in permanent transition; as a shifting point of view from which to interpret the world and the pluraties contained therein. The title of the section seeks to express this exact ever-shifting perspective. As travelers across time and space, the enunciative voices that emerge in each work convey an idea of selfhood that is in constant flux and reformulation. As the reader will find, these identitarian transitions occur both spatially via transnational and transcultural movement, as well as through the self’s interpretation of time and the various experiences that mark its passing. Regarding the self, movement is both an act and a state of being in the world.

1. María E. Macaya. Poesía. Bordercrossing Celebration Gala [Video]
2. Mzwakithi M. Shongwe. Uma viagem a Inhambane.
3. Fiona Rodgerson. Chilenocanadá: los Espacios del Exilio Chileno.
4. Tres escenas teatrales. Bordercrossing Celebration Gala [Videos]
5. Estudiantes del curso Spanish 105 A. Dos telenovelas cortas. [Videos]
6. Michiko Arai. El tatuaje del ciervo.
7. Andrew Smith. O Melhor de Mim.
8. Emily Duh. Meus olhos.
9. Fiona Maloney-McCrystle. O Melhor de Mim.
10. Kirra Simonson. Assim como as estações.
11. Molly Benedetto. Minha clavícula de aço.
12. João W. Meu dente de ouro.
13. Samantha Lamont. La búsqueda de la felicidad.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: OTHERNESS, IDENTITY, AND CULTURE

In this section of Portulano, the reader will find texts engaged in the discovery, analysis, and deconstruction of various forms of otherness. Familiar images of the “Other” are usually deceitful, because they mask unequeal power relations and mechanisms of stereotyping, racialization, reduction, naturalization, etc. A crucial endeavor, if we are to reach intercultural dialogue and global citizenship, is to eradicate false preconceptions of the “Other” by studying how and why such representations are constructed and enforced. Students of Spanish and Portuguese develop a more accurate comprehension of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds by, in the first place, criticizing distorted depictions that circulate in cultural discourse. In this way, students come to appreciate that the conventional borders that separate them from otherness are usually artificial barriers that must be overcome if they want to understand foreign cultures –and to better know themselves. In this process, unexpected similarities and deeper differences between “us” and “them” may become visible, as these works show.

1. Délia Taylor. Linhas.
2. Casey Harlow. La otredad y la maduración.
   
3. Fiona Maloney-McCrystle. La vigilancia y la imitación.
4. Lola Von Miramar reads from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) as well as an excerpt from Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes’s La Abolición del pato (2013).
5. Azalie Welsh. Los defectos en la filosofía de la educación de Jaime Escalante.
6. Bea Eppler. El Laberinto del fauno:  “Los ojos que lo ven todo.”
7. Jordan Seman. La Otredad y la muerte en Salón de belleza y Biutiful.
8. Josh Kruskal. Los jóvenes urbanos y la búsqueda de sentido generacional.
9. Maddie Gilbert. La colectividad de las identidades posnacionales.
10. Yashu Zhang. Desde el erotismo hasta la vida interior La aplicación de las teorías.
11. Amity May Calvin & Rachel Elisabeth Kinney. Cruzando la frontera al deseo. [Video]

REVOLUTIONS: PAST AND PRESENT

Revolutions… How many have there been? Haw many are going on right now? How many will happen in the future? French, Mexican, Russian, Czech, Georgian, Ukrainian, Arab… Blitz, Interminable, Red, Velvet, Rose, Orange… Different and similar, violent and gentle, past and present… In this section, the authors scrutinize some of them, namely the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the Arab Spring Revolution of 2010 and the role of women in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. These essays were initially written as part of Spanish 301 Course in the Fall Semester of 2013. We hope you enjoy reading them.

1. Michael Winkler. El papel de medios de comunicación social en la Primavera Árabe.
2. Hannah Giese. La doble moral de la mujer revolucionaria.
3. Kristina Pallová. La revolución y el fenómeno revolucionario.
4. Julie Merchant. Un doble rasero:  Las expectativas de las mujeres en la revolución mexicana

 “SER” O “ESTAR”

The distinction between the verbs “ser” and “estar” is one of the hardest grammar points for English Speaking students to master. These are the poems that were written by the students from the beginner Spanish 103 course in response to a poem by the renowned Uruguayan author Mario Benedetti. These poems –which on the surface deal with just a grammar point– also lead to questioning one’s identity and raise one’s awareness of other cultures and there “expressions”.

1. Sebastian Kern and Tony Hsu. El hombre es listo.
2. Karlo Skarica y Hope Kuchinski. Necesito aclararme.
3. Jared Keyes y Hannah Blair. Ser y estar.
4. Maddie Hack y Eleanor Lorton. Oh America Latina.
5. Bia Brigstockey Francesca Conde. …comprendo por qué usted.
6. Divesh Rizal y Ellen Sartorelli. …aparezco en tu horizonte.