Between Activism and Commodification: Identity Politics and Imagined Communities at Three Californian Latino/a Film Festivals

My project investigates three ethnic niche – more precisely, Latino/a – film festivals, all based in different Californian metropolitan areas. I argue that they all function as discursive and performative arenas for a variety of social actors in order to articulate their desires for political participation – defined as a “historically variable communicative space made up of practices, symbols and discourses”(SFB / Collaborative Research Center 584, Bielefeld University), as well as for belonging and community-building. Accordingly, my methodology ranges from cultural and media studies to discourse analysis and social anthropology. Focussing on a time span covering the early 1990s until today, my research explores how these festivals have continued to engage both with site- and community-specific histories of social and “cultural activism” (Ginsburg 1994) as well as with larger-scale, (trans)national discourses on citizenship and belonging, with particular regard to aspects of the market, commodification practices, and consumer citizenship.

In conjunction with this project, I have done extensive fieldwork in the U.S., including a number of stays as a visiting scholar at the Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Academic discipline: Anglistik

Advisors: Prof. Dr. Sebastian Thies (Tübingen), Prof. Dr. Wilfried Raussert (Bielefeld)