Geographies of the Body: New Patagonian Poetry

Geographies of the Body: New Patagonian Poetry with Dr. Jenny Haase, Visiting Scholar, Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures

Patagonia has been associated with the end of the world, emptiness, wind, gigantic dimensions and eccentric characters over centuries. Travel writers, novelists and filmmakers from the Latin American, US and European centers have spread these clichés about the southernmost region of the American continent. During the last two decades, however, a new Patagonian literature has been emerging that proposes a different literary geography of the Argentinean and Chilean south. This talk will focus on contemporary Patagonian poetry to explore the search for a poetic voice 'from the margins'. It will examine questions of subjectivity, alterity, and the body in the context of post-colonial and post-dictatorial culture and society, as well as the re-appropiation of mapuche myths and biblical narratives.

Dr. Jenny Haase is Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literatures at Humboldt University, Berlin and currently a postdoctoral research fellow at ILAC at Stanford University, sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She has published numerous articles on Chilean and Argentinean literature and film, including a monograph about historical novels and travel writing on Patagonia (Patagoniens verflochtene Erzählwelten. Der argentinische und chilenische Süden in Reiseliteratur und historischem Roman (1977-1999), Tübingen 2009).  Her further research focuses on Spanish, Latin American and French 20th and 21st century literature and the Siglo de Oro, with special emphasis on poetry, intertextuality, mysticism, and gender studies.