22 research outputs found
Response to Commentary on “Rethinking Combined Departments: An Argument for History & Anthropology” by Stephen M. Lyon/Durham University, UK; Yasar Abu Ghosh, Pavel Himl, Tereza Stöckelová, Lucie Storchová/Charles University, Prague; Robert Gibb/University of Glasgow; Jakob Krause-Jensen/Aarhus University, Denmark; Veerendra P. Lele/Denison University
No full textContains response from the authors, Ageeth Sluis and Elise Edwards
Carlos Castaneda, Anthropology and the Construction of a Magical Mexico
No full textIn this filmed lecture, Dr. Ageeth Sluis (associate professor of Latin American history at Butler University) discusses her research on American author Carlos Castaneda. In 1960, Castaneda found himself eye to eye with Juan Matus, a Yaqui shaman, in a bus station in the border town of Nogales, Arizona. Castaneda, then a graduate student in anthropology at the University of California-Los Angeles, met Don Juan because he sought an informant on the indigenous use of psychotropic plants. Castaneda supposedly got more than he bargained for when he became the shaman\u27s apprentice. Describing the separate realities of a secret indigenous world, Castaneda\u27s first three books (beginning with The Teachings of Don Juan) became international bestsellers and propelled Castaneda into the world of fame and notoriety.
Sluis explores how Castaneda\u27s work provides a unique window on a series of related phenomena: the rise of a New Left, counterculture spirituality, a politicization of anthropology, new understandings of indigenous identity, and the creation of a magical Mexico
Deco Body, Deco City: Female Spectacle and Modernity in Mexico City, 1900–1939
No full textIn the turbulent decades following the Mexican Revolution, Mexico City saw a drastic influx of female migrants seeking escape and protection from the ravages of war in the countryside. While some settled in slums and tenements, where the informal economy often provided the only means of survival, the revolution, in the absence of men, also prompted women to take up traditionally male roles, created new jobs in the public sphere open to women, and carved out new social spaces in which women could exercise agency.
In Deco Body, Deco City, Ageeth Sluis explores the effects of changing gender norms on the formation of urban space in Mexico City by linking aesthetic and architectural discourses to political and social developments. Through an analysis of the relationship between female migration to the city and gender performances on and off the stage, the book shows how a new transnational ideal female physique informed the physical shape of the city. By bridging the gap between indigenismo (pride in Mexico’s indigenous heritage) and mestizaje (privileging the ideal of race mixing), this new female deco body paved the way for mestizo modernity. This cultural history enriches our understanding of Mexico’s postrevolutionary decades and brings together social, gender, theater, and architectural history to demonstrate how changing gender norms formed the basis of a new urban modernity
The choice of interdisciplinarities
No full textResponses to Ageeth Sluis and Elise Edwards, \u27Rethinking combined departments: an argument for History and Anthropology\u27, published in Learning and Teaching (Lyon, Stephen M. 2014. “Responses to Ageeth Sluis and Elise Edwards, ‘Rethinking Combined Departments: An Argument for History and Anthropology’, Published in ‘Learning and Teaching’ 6.1: The Choice of Interdisciplinarities.” Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences 7 (2): 84–86. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24717989.
Journeys to Others and Lessons of Self: Carlos Castaneda in <i>Camposcape</i>
No full textDrawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, this article examines the importance of place and gender within constructions of race politics in Carlos Castaneda’s series on shamanism. Championing a “separate reality” predicated on an indigenous worldview, Castaneda’s lessons invited transnational middle-class youth to "journey" alongside him to camposcape—an anachronistic and idealized countryside—as a means to escape the bourgeois values of their homelands and find spiritual fulfillment in a timeless and "authentic" Mexico. Castaneda’s work proposed new viable spaces of difference in Mexico, yet inscribed these spaces with a masculinist discourse that served to neutralize the gender trouble within the counterculture movement in both Mexico and the US
\u3cem\u3eBataclanismo\u3c/em\u3e! Or, How Deco Bodies Transformed Postrevolutionary Mexico City
No full textIn the spring of 1925, Santa Anita\u27s Festival of Flowers seemed to follow its tranquil trend of previous years. The large displays of flowers, the selection of indias bonitas (as the contestants of beauty pageants organized in an attempt to stimulate indigenism were known) and the boat-rides on the Viga Canal, all communicated what residents of neighboring Mexico City had come to expect of the small pueblo in the Federal District since the Porfiriato: the respite of a peaceful pastoral, the link to a colorful past, and the promise that mexicanidad was alive and well in the campo. Unfortunately, wrote Manuel Rámirez Cárdenas of El Globo, the modern newspaper, the next day, this idyllic tradition was rudely interrupted by a group of audacious, scantily clad women. The culprits were actresses of Mexico City\u27s Lírico theater, who walked around Santa Anita\u27s streets in picaresque clothing —stage outfits that left little to the imagination, particularly in broad daylight—and upset visitors and campesinos alike. According to Cárdenas, abuelitas and mamás were shocked by the display, averting their eyes from the female spectacle in fear of el pecado mortal. Thankfully, for the mothers and grandmothers in the audience, the festival continued in predictable fashion after the initial uproar. Organizers continued with the traditional dances, and judges selected an india bonita from a pool of young, decente mestizo girls to represent the pueblo and the festival.
Unbeknownst to the residents of rural Santa Anita, the daring actresses of El Lírico were part of a new phenomenon that had swept through Mexico City like wildfire, turned the entertainment world upside down, and pushed many to reconsider what constituted female beauty, decency, and lo mexicano. A few months earlier, on February 12th, a grand variety spectacle named Voilá Paris: La Ba-ta-clán premiered in Teatro Iris and instantly sent shock waves throughout the Mexican entertainment world and the larger metropolis. The show featured seminude and nude French actresses, who performed dances and acts that appeared to be a mix of classical ballet, Ziegfeld Follies chorus lines, and tableaux vivants. Within weeks, Mexican copycat productions capitalized on the enormous success of the show, triggering a new entertainment phenomenon named after the original production: Bataclanismo. It also launched a new kind of female star, the bataclana, who came to represent the erotic, and more dangerous, attributes of the flapper for Mexican audiences, and whose body became the site of contested and divergent notions of modernity.
In this article, I explore bataclanismo as a normative discourse that reached far beyond the theater into the practice of everyday life. I do so to gauge the transition of changing ideals of femininity in Mexico from 1925 to 1935, and the influence these changes had on the development of urban space. Drawing on Elizabeth Grosz\u27 and Doreen Massey\u27s insights that place and gender are mutually constitutive, this article examines the articulation between the embodied city and changing gender norms in the wake of both the Mexican revolution and the advent of twentieth-century global capital. Analyzing these relationships from Judith Butler\u27s perspective of gender performance, especially as read through bodies, I argue that a new transnational aesthetic of feminine embodiment celebrated in bataclanismo influenced a distinct urban modernity and sociability in Mexico City. This new ideal female physique that stressed length, height, and androgyny—what I term a Deco body—helped to reconfigure Mexico City in terms of gender, space and race. It ushered in new gender ideals, helped visualize urban modernity, and bridged the gap between two divergent discourses that accompanied revolutionary reform, indigenismo and mestizaje, paving the way for a mestizo modernity
Projecting Pornography and Mapping Modernity in Mexico City
No full textDrawing on Elizabeth Grosz’s and Doreen Massey’s insights that place and gender are mutually constitutive, this article examines the articulation among the embodied city, sexual desire, and changing gender norms in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. At this time, a newly governing revolutionary elite sought to reinvigorate and “civilize” Mexico City through a series of urban reforms and public works, partly in response to their concern over women in public as a social problem. By analyzing depictions of female nudity as conversant with urban landscapes in the banned magazine Vea, the author argues that pornography connected Mexico City to transnational ideas of the early twentieth century that held that sexually liberated women were part and parcel of cosmopolitan modernity. Vea exemplified and fueled concerns over “public women” and helps scholars understand larger debates on the gendered effects of revolution, urbanization, and transnational currents of global modernity
Journeys to Others and Lessons of Self: Carlos Castaneda in \u3cem\u3eCamposcape\u3c/em\u3e
No full textDrawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, this article examines the importance of place and gender within constructions of race politics in Carlos Castaneda’s series on shamanism. Championing a “separate reality” predicated on an indigenous worldview, Castaneda’s lessons invited transnational middle-class youth to journey alongside him to camposcape—an anachronistic and idealized countryside—as a means to escape the bourgeois values of their homelands and find spiritual fulfillment in a timeless and authentic Mexico. Castaneda’s work proposed new viable spaces of difference in Mexico, yet inscribed these spaces with a masculinist discourse that served to neutralize the gender trouble within the counterculture movement in both Mexico and the US
Building Bodies: Creating Urban Landscapes of Athletic Aesthetics in Postrevolutionary Mexico City
No full textFrom 1927 on, a statue of a robust indigenous woman greeted visitors at the entrance of the new Parque México in Mexico City. Shaded by high trees, the woman—pouring water from two large urns into a small pool of blue waters—beckoned passersby away from the hustle and bustle of the large new Insurgentes thoroughfare to a place where life was tranquil, easy, and uncorrupted by the toils of modernity. With her braids, her strong indigenous physique, and the blue waters and greenery around her, the statue represented an idyllic, pastoral landscape that weary city dwellers had come to associate with authentic Mexico—a utopian place where beauty and health went hand in hand. What residents of the surrounding Colonia Condesa encountered upon entering the park, however, was not merely a shady respite of trails, ponds, and fountains. Directly beyond the fountain, on the grounds that had once housed an upscale horse-racing track (the Hipódromo), a visitor would find a large open-air theater. Bathed in Art Deco, the theater’s stage was graced by two slender columns bearing two women significantly distinct from the indígena: they were tall, angular, and white. Named after the man who had first accomplished transcontinental flight, the Teatro al Aire Libre Lindbergh inspired onlookers to reach for the skies
