Scholars from universities in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina converged on StFX earlier this month for a four-day symposium focused on “Cinematic Mothers: Mothering and Motherhood in Contemporary Latin American Cultures.”
The event was organized by Dr. Maria Soledad Paz-Mackay, a professor in StFX’s Modern Languages Department, along with colleagues Dr. Argelia Gonzalez Hurtado from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and Dr. Omar Rodriguez from the University of Lethbridge. It was supported by a SSHRC Connections Grant, the three partnering universities, and the Asociación de Hispanistas y Latinoamericanistas de las Provincias del Atlántico (AHLPA).
During the symposium, participants presented their research on a variety of themes, all related to the representation of mothering in films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela, and the United States.
“The symposium was an extremely productive gathering,” says Dr. Paz-Mackay. “The results of this fruitful encounter will be published as an edited volume and a collection of video essays on the movies analyzed in the book.”
Dr. Alejandra Ramm, a sociologist from Universidad de Valparaiso, opened the first day with a lecture on the status of motherhood in Latin American countries, with an emphasis on the Chilean case. On the second day, Dr. Marcela Visconti, a film studies professor from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, delivered a second lecture on the relationships between motherhood, cinema, and culture in Latin America, drawing attention to gestures, images, tones, and figurations. The third lecture, on the last day of the symposium, presented the importance of digital humanities (in the form of video essays) in the context of film studies; it was given by Dr. Briget Franco, professor of Spanish at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.
On the last day, Adonay Guerrero Cortés, a filmmaker and film production professor at Queen’s University, led two workshops on the technical skills needed to prepare a video essay. The active, hands-on workshops covered a wide range of tasks, from editing and compiling short clips to using sound.
