Junior Fellows

Jorge Estrada holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the FU Berlin and a B.A. in Hispanic Literatures from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He is the author of the monograph Experiencing Ethics with Sterne and Musil (2019), as well as of various papers on Roberto Bolaño’s novels. His current projects include a transareal approach to literary transfer, a comparative study on sense effects with a focus on twentieth century Latin American literature, and a monograph on Bolaño’s critique of Humanism and the Enlightenment. His research draws from affect theory, ethical criticism, critical theory, and literary theory.

Abstract: A Ruthless Conviviality in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. Dystopic Pluralities

This project focuses on the practices that foster belonging and allow interactions to turn into collaborating communities in Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666 (2004). As migrants, political exiles, minor poets, or institutionally sanctioned intellectuals, Bolaño’s characters must constantly negotiate their cultural differences, find leeway in power relations, use the imaginaries available to them, and reflect on their roles as producers, gatekeepers or marginal agents in a cultural and social setting. In this process, the same mechanism that can lay the grounds for solidarity can also create power groups and lead to violence. By examining these varying representations of living together, the project aims to reflect on a kind of plurality defined by dispossession and constant negotiation in asymmetrical positions of power.

Main discipline: Literary Studies

Selected publications:

• Estrada, Jorge (2019): Experiencing Ethics with Sterne and Musil. A Relentless Character Construction [Spectrum literaturwissenschaft/ spectrum literature 67], Boston: De Gruyter.

• Estrada, Jorge (2021a): “Bolaño con Deleuze. El hipo como enfermedad de la historia en Monsieur Pain“, in: Badebec, 10, 20, 106–137.

• Estrada, Jorge (2021b): “De la frente al vientre. Ética violenta e inmanente en ‘El Ojo Silva’ de Roberto Bolaño”, in: Aisthesis, [forthcoming].

• Estrada, Jorge (2021c): “Violencia como afecto y cámara de resonancia intertextual en ‘El Ojo Silva’ de Roberto Bolaño”, in: Mandolessi, Silvana; Dhondt, Reindert and Zicart, Martín (eds.), Afectos y violencia en la cultura hispanoamericana [forthcoming], collection “Nexos y diferencias” Iberoamericana/Vervuert.

• Estrada, Jorge and Yurgel, Caio (2021): “A Liquid Episteme: Roberto Bolaño, Fictional Biographies, and the Enlightenment”, in: Hispanic Review, [forthcoming].

Jerónimo Pinedo is a Social Sciences graduate (Licenciatura and Magister) from the UNLP. He obtained his doctoral degree in Social Sciences from the UNGS (National University of General Sarmiento) and the Institute of Economic and Social Development (IDES). He is Adjunct Professor in the field of analysis of Argentinian society in the Sociology Department of the Faculty for Humanities and Educational Sciences of the UNLP. Additionally, he is a member of the research staff of CISH-IdIHCS-FaHCE group (Centre of Socio-historical Research, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences Research) of the same university. He is a specialist in the areas recent Argentinan history, mass culture (clases populares), collective movements, cultural studies, and academic community outreach. Currently, he is actively involved in the UNLP’s outreach activities in an organising capacity.

Project: Moral economies and precarious conviviality in two Latin-American metropolitan areas during the COVID-19 Pandemic*

Abstract:

This project investigates the precarious structures of conviviality and the practical strategies of the working classes (clases populares) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on the daily life and collective initiatives of the inhabitants of two urban peripheries, specifically on four aspects: health, living space, labour, and access to food. What kind of effects did the pandemic have on these aspects of life? What types of interactions, practical knowledge, and tools for conviviality were brought into play to carry on living? What conflicts, transformations, inventions, and ways of adapting are emerging in the conviviality of the metropolitan periphery in the face of the spreading virus, public policy to combat its proliferation, and the pandemic’s devastating and multifaceted consequences for individual and collective life?

Main discipline: Sociology

Selected publications:
• Pinedo, Jerónimo (2019): “Oficio, oficiantes y extensión universitaria. Notas a favor de una sociología modesta en una universidad de poros abiertos“, in: Cuestiones de sociología, 21, e081.

• Pinedo, Jerónimo (2020): “Repertorios represivos y repertorios de resistencia. Aproximaciones desde la experiencia de los obreros industriales de la zona sur del Gran Buenos Aires durante la última dictadura cívico militar (1976 y 1981)”, in: Zorzoli, Luciana and Mazzano, Juan P. (eds.), Clase obrera y dictadura militar en Argentina (1976-1983). Nuevos estudios sobre conflictividad y cambios estructurales, Argentina: EDITORIAL A CONTRACORRIEN.

• Pinedo, Jerónimo and Segura, Ramiro (2020): “Espacios, velocidades y senderos. Sobre algunas dinámicas espaciales de la Pandemia“, in: Escenarios, 32, 20.

• Pinedo, Jerónimo (ed.) (2021a): La Plata: Entre los libros de la buena memoria [forthcoming], FaHCE.

• Pinedo, Jerónimo (2021b): “Zona sur. Urdimbres de la acción colectiva popular en el Gran Buenos Aires (1974-1989)”, in: Pinedo, Jerónimo (ed.), La Plata: Entre los libros de la buena memoria [forthcoming], FaHCE.

• Pinedo, Jerónimo (2021c): “Misas, peregrinaciones y manifestaciones. Acción colectiva popular en el Gran Buenos Aires en dictadura (1976-1981)”, in: Clepsidra, Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios sobre Memoria, [forthcoming].

Raquel Rojas Scheffer holds a PhD in Sociology from FU Berlin, where she was part of the International Research Training Group “Between Spaces”. She obtained an M.A. in Social Sciences from the HU Berlin (Humboldt University of Berlin), with a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She is originally from Paraguay, where she earned a Specialist Degree in Social Development from FLACSO (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences) and a B.A. in Social Sciences from the UNA (National University of Asuncion). She is a categorised researcher (Level I) at the Paraguayan National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT). Her research focuses on inequalities, social movements, and labour relations.

Project: Political changes in an intimate space? Lockdown and negotiations around care work in households that (used to) outsource domestic chores*

Abstract:

En la mayoría de los países de América Latina las clases altas y medias tienden a resolver sus necesidades de cuidado mediante la contratación de trabajadoras domésticas. Sin embargo, esta práctica se vio afectada con la irrupción de la pandemia de COVID-19. A partir de entrevistas con empleadoras de Asunción (Paraguay) que tuvieron que adaptarse a la ausencia de la trabajadora doméstica durante medidas de cuarentena, este proyecto analiza los cambios en las relaciones de convivencia y los arreglos relativos a la distribución de las tareas domésticas. Al hacerlo, pone de relieve no sólo cambios en la rutina y el uso del tiempo de los miembros de la familia, sino también en las percepciones del papel de la trabajadora doméstica y el valor del trabajo de cuidados dentro y fuera de los hogares.

*to be translated

Main discipline: Sociology

Selected publications:
• Rojas Scheffer, Raquel (2019): “De Asunción a Ginebra: Trabajo doméstico remunerado y redes de activismo laboral en Paraguay”, in: Aguirre, Luis; Loysa, Carolin; Sánchez, Brenda M.; Moszczynska, Joanna and Suárez, Diana M. H. (eds.), Giros espacio-temporales: Repensando los entrelazamientos globales desde América Latina, Berlin: Walter Frey, 47–64.

• Rojas Scheffer, Raquel (2020a): “Physically Close, Socially Distant Paid Domestic Work and (Dis-)Encounters in Latin America’s Private Households“, in: Mecila Working Papers Series, 27.

• Rojas Scheffer, Raquel (2020b): “Same Work, Same Value? Paid Domestic Workers’ and Housewives’ Struggles for Rights in Uruguay and Paraguay“, in: Current Sociology.

• Rojas Scheffer, Raquel (2021): “Essential yet Undervalued. Paid Domestic Work, Migration, and the Struggles for Labor Rights in Uruguay and Paraguay”, in: Alba, Ximena and Bruno Miranda (eds.), Migrant Labor in Global Chains [forthcoming], Berlin: Walter Frey.

Madalina Stefan holds a PhD in Romance Philology and Cultural Studies from the University of Tübingen (EKUT), a Master’s degree in Interamerican Studies and a Bachelor´s degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Bielefeld University (BU). Besides, she studied filmmaking in Barcelona and was granted a junior fellowship at the Center of Interdisciplinary Research, as well as a postdoctoral WiRe-fellowship at the WWU Münster.

In the past years she participated in the organisation and lectureship of several international summer schools and conferences, and has taught at different universities, such as Pompeu Fabra (Spain), Bielefeld (Germany), Guadalajara (Mexico) and EKUT (Germany).

Her research interests are literary and cinematographic ecocriticism, gender and postcolonial studies, migration studies and accented cinema, essay and autobiographical writing in film and literature, and indigenous cinema.

Project: Postcolonial Resistance, Ecofeminism, and Conviviality in the Spanish American Jungle Novel

Abstract:

Decolonisation and the Anthropocene have become key words in the context of late postmodernity. The ways of narrating nature are gaining an increasing importance today as threatening scenarios of natural disasters and social injustice overshadow our completely medialised realities. Against this backdrop, the project investigates how narratives of nature have been used in a productive manner, foregrounding a postcolonial resistance that denounces the exploitation of nature and promotes a respectful conviviality between humans and nature. The project focuses on a particularly relevant literary moment that is famous for its entanglement of postcolonialism and nature-writing, namely the Spanish American jungle novel (novela de la selva).

Main discipline: Literary Studies

Selected publications:

• Stefan, Madalina (2015): “La suspensión del tiempo como felicidad del hombre“, in: DOCMA.

• Stefan, Madalina (2016): “Entrevista a Pablo Montoya”, in: Quimera, 388, 7–10.

• Stefan, Madalina (2021a) with Sebastian Thies and Graciela Martínez Zalce (ed.): Encuadrando la dictadura en el cine latinoamericano. Ciudad de Mexico: Bonilla Artigas Editores.

• Stefan, Madalina (2021b): “Naturaleza y resistencia poscolonial en <La Vorágine> y <Heart of Darkness>”, in: Matzat, Wolfgang and Tries, Sebastian (eds.), La invención de la naturaleza latinoamericana. Genealogía discursiva y funcionalidad sociocultural, Madrid: Iberoamericana/ Vervuert.

• Stefan, Madalina (2022): Espacio nómada en el ensayo autobiográfico del Accented Cinema [PhD thesis], New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press.

Nicolás Suárez holds a PhD in Literature from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He is a former scholarship-recipient of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and CONICET, as well as visiting scholar at the UzK. His book The Work and Life of Sarmiento in Cinema received an award from the National Contest of Studies on Argentine Cinema. He received the Best Essay Award by a Graduate Student from the LASA Film Section, and the First Prize in the Domingo Di Núbila Essay Contest, held by the Argentine Association of Audiovisual and Film Studies (AsAECA). He also directed the short film Centauro (Berlinale, 2017) and co-directed the feature film Hijos Nuestros (Mar del Plata, 2015).

Abstract: Latin American Film Museums: Remapping the Politics of Film Preservation in Convivial and Unequal Contexts*

The mid-20^th century saw the establishment of numerous new film museums and libraries designed to preserve the cultural heritage of certain communities. In Latin America specifically, these institutions developed as convivial configurations, in which profound cultural differences and asymmetric funding had significant consequences for the relationship between the film archives and different agents. This project will provide a comparative historical analysis of iconic Latin American film institutions. On the one hand, such relationships conferred legitimacy to existing hierarchies. On the other hand, however, they shaped anti-hegemonic memorialisation strategies, in the face of both poor public policy and of the digital technologies responsible for the medium’s descent into obsolescence.

Main discipline: Literary Studies

Selected publications:
• Suárez, Nicolás (2017a): “Movimiento y proyección en el matadero del cine argentino: Martín Fierro (1923) de Alfredo Quesada“, in: Catedral Tomada. Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, 5, 9, 295–320.

• Suárez, Nicolás (2017b): Obra y vida de Sarmiento en el cine, Buenos Aires: Ciccus.

• Suárez, Nicolás (2019a): “El regreso de Nobleza gaucha: Homero Manzi y la ampliación del paisaje criollista en el cine sonoro“, in: Imagofagia. Revista de la Asociación Argentina de Estudios de Cine y Audiovisual, 19, 171–2016.

• Suárez, Nicolás (2019b): “Los gauchos angloparlantes y la pampa en Technicolor: versiones y perversiones del Martín Fierro en Way of a Gaucho (1952) de Jacques Tourneur“, in: 452ºF, 20, 126–148.

• Suárez, Nicolás (2021): “The Creole Faust on Screen: Between Late Style and the Comedy of Development”, in: Wood, David and Ben Bollig (eds.), The Poetry-Film Nexus in Latin America. Exploring Intermediality on Page and Screen [forthcoming], Cambridge: Legenda.