Travels

The experience in Rio was marvelous. I taught the graduate class "Recreating the Nation" in Spanish. A few students spoke Spanish well, all could understand it via Portunhol, and some used English as well. I didn't learn a great deal of Portuguese, but it was a wonderful experience. The students were so much more sophisticated intellectually and politically than I am used to, I could barely believe it. Puts my daily norms into perspective. Then we had a superb conference on the obligation to be happy--a marvelous critique of the psy-function from numerous perspectives. Again, to be amongst people for whom socialism is not a bad name; who all work in various languages; who all break down the barrier--when it exists--between the social sciences and the humanities--was extraordinary. As usual, people gave me copies of their books, invited me back, and so on. This is not special to me--it's about the way they operate as intellectuals.

I went via Miami to Mexico next, where I consulted with Promexico, which has a tripartite group on cultural policy and film, and gave another talk at the Cineteca Nacional on the history of cultural policy and how to reach the US-based hispano-hablante public with films from Latin America via TV and the internet. I also gave interviews to my favorite paper after the Guardian (La Jornada) and Concaculta's TV coverage.

Now I'm headed home after an amazing week. Why can't we do these things in California?

RIO DE JANEIRO

I arrived in Rio de Janeiro this morning, my first day in Brazil. I'm here to teach a course called Recreating the Nation for graduate students in the school of communication. You can find the outline on this site, under the heading 'Espanol.' I can't speak Portuguese, so the class will be in Spanish, with perhaps some English, too. No-one will be operating in their first language.

I gave an interview today to a journalist from O Globo and also lunched with one of the symposium organizers. Then I was lucky enough to have time to catch some waves at Copacabana Beach, which is just a block or two from my hotel. Even though it's winter, the waters were warm as well as beautiful.

Now it's time to read over the syllabus and think about the clips of Ignacio Martin-Baro and Michel Foucault we'll be watching in class, in addition to nutting my way through Martin-Baro in Portuguese

Toby

PODCASTS

I've re-edited the podcast interview with David Theo Goldberg, some of which was lost in translation between programs, wires, fingers, and ears. I have also added a second interview with Bill Grantham. Like my other guests, I think these chats are well worth hearing.

Toby

PODCAST UPDATE

Listen to my latest culturalstudies podcast here: http://culturalstudies.podbean.com/. It's with Bill Grantham. He discusses the law and film finance, relationships between literary and cultural studies, and the life of a journalist, inter alia.

TALKS

For folks who may be interested, I'll be giving three keynotes or plenaries in the next month:

at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro August 25, 2010 on happiness http://www.ufrj.br/mostraNoticia.php?cod_noticia=10133;

the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico City August 28, 2010 on film policy; and

the Universities of Westminster and Goldsmith's September 13, 2010 on media and terrorism http://www.westminster.ac.uk/schools/media/camri/events/camri-events-calendar/2010/global-media-and-the-war-on-terror-an-international-conference

NEW PODCAST

The latest pod entrant is Ellen Seiter, who speaks about the avant garde, film, soap opera, the law, and feminism. Hear her now by going to the iTunes store and looking up 'culturalstudies' or at http://culturalstudies.podbean.com/

NEW PODCAST

Latest podcast is with Tiffany López--find it at http://culturalstudies.podbean.com or go to the iTunes store and look up 'culturalstudies'

Tiffany speaks compellingly about Latin@ culture, violence, theater, art, and academia