Chicano Studies and Inter-American Studies in Germany

About the Book Chapter

The engagement with Chicana/o literary and cultural production in Germany began in the 1980s and continued to be strong throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s. Chicana/o Studies in Germany first emerged from the efforts of a number of committed German scholars who began to investigate and publish on the literature written by Mexican Americans in the United States in the 1980s. Their endeavors were encouraged by the increasing interest in the study of US ethnic minorities in German American Studies, an interest that had developed beginning in the 1970s, clearly motivated by a countercultural spirit. The 1984 conference on Chicana/o culture in Mainz-Germersheim was the first of a series of major international conferences that dealt with the Latino literatures of the United States and provided a platform for German, other European and American scholars of Chicana/o literature. The early endeavors in German American Studies to promote Chicana/o literature and Chicano Studies generated a series of dissertation and postdoctoral projects.

About the Author

Prof. Dr. Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez (SFB 1199 & Leipzig University)

My research focuses on the cultural processes which link American culture to other cultures or which are situated in between cultures. My doctoral dissertation investigated literary translations of Stephen Crane texts as cultural products at the intersection of literary studies, cultural studies and translation studies. For my Habilitation project, I researched the border zone between the United States and Mexico as a culturally productive space which plays an important role in redefining concepts of nation and national culture. My current research interests are in the fields of 19th century inter-American relations, transnational studies and critical regionalism, Latino/a studies, migration studies, and 21st century concepts of race and ethnicity.