Guests and Fellows
Visit of guest researcher Roberto Abdala Júnior, 15.11.-15.12.2021
Roberto Abdala Júnior is professor at the Faculty of History of the Universidad Federal de Goiás - UFG (Goiânia - Brasilien). He conducts research on audiovisual narratives, as well as on the construction of history and reality in film and television. One of his research topics is the incorporation of real historical images and archival materials into the fictional plot of the mini-series Anos Rebeldes. The research stay at GUMELAB focused on the production of Brazilian telenovelas and series such as Anos Rebeldes and O bem amado, which were analyzed by Roberto within the socio-political context of the country. The construction of memories and the effects on the political participation of society were central to the analysis. These shape, to no small extent, a part of the historical consciousness. Theories by Jörn Rüsen and Mikhail Bakhtin helped to categorize theoretically the reception of audiovisual formats by the audience. Roberto's visit succeeded in initiating discussions about audiovisual narratives in the Brazilian context, which differs from previous GUMELAB case studies from Chile and Colombia. Along with a joint analysis of individual sequences from Anos Rebeldes, the GUMELAB team, joined by Roberto and Colombian scholar Gicela Andrea Aguirre García, analyzed the first episode of Pablo Escobar-el Patrón del Mal from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. Thus, the group reflected on cultural peculiarities of the different productions. A joint visit to the Deutschen Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen in Berlin helped to place film and television in the media landscape in terms of time and development.
Visit of guest researcher Lorena Antezana Barrios, 12.09.-12.10.2021
Lorena Antezana Barrios is a professor at the Instituto de Comunicación e Imagen de la Universidad de Chile. She researches the reception of audiovisual media, critical media consumption and media education. For example, she and her team are investigating, among other things, the reception of the Chilean telenovela Los 80 in different generations.
Her research stay at GUMELAB involved the conceptualisation of certain working terms such as memory images and "imaginarios" (similar to "imaginations" in English). Together with the GUMELAB team, she analysed different audio-visual and narrative strategies of how historical events are staged in entertainment media. For this, the contextualisation of the Chilean media landscape and memory processes was central. Thanks to her different experiences, she was able to explain different methods for the reception studies of telenovelas and series. During her stay, the characteristics and advantages of tandem partnerships between Master's students and doctoral candidates from the University of Chile and the Institute for Latin American Studies were also discussed. On the agenda was also the preparation of an international and interdisciplinary workshop at the Universidad de Chile and the travels of dialogue that will take place in Tocopilla and Santiago de Chile in March. These are part of GUMELAB's transfer activities to make science accessible to society.
Visit of the guest researcher Dr. Karen Genschow, 26.07.21 - 06.08.2021
Dr. Karen Genschow is a literature and cultural studies scholar with a regional focus on Latin America (with a thematic emphasis on cultural memory, trauma, gender) in literature, film, and popular cultural objects such as comics and series. She is an expert on Chilean series about the military dictatorship such as Mary y Mike, Ecos del desierto and Argentine telenovelas with a historical reference such as Montecristo. During her research stay at GUMELAB, several working meetings and internal workshops were held on decoding the genre and narrative elements of Latin American telenovelas and series.