Arizona State University
______________________________________________________________________________

College of Liberal Arts
Department of Languages and Literatures
Tempe , Arizona 85287-0202

David William Foster
Regents' Professor of Spanish and Women's Studies
Editor , Chasqui; revista de literatura latinoamericana
480-965-3752 / 6281
FAX 480-965-0135
e-mail david.foster@asu.edu

Dear Colleague:

Thank you for your interest in the NEH Summer Seminar on Jewish Buenos Aires. We have planned an exciting and challenging program for participants to acquire familiarity with the Jewish immigrant experience in the Argentine capital, the largest Jewish community in Latin America and one of the largest urban communities in the world. The Jewish presence in Buenos Aires, despite various social, political, and economic factors that have sparked emigration over past decades—the most important one being to undertake the return to Israel—the Buenos Aires Jewish community remains strong, very visible, and highly involved in all aspects of Argentine daily life, especially in artistic, intellectual, professional, and commercial/financial sectors.

My excitement at having been selected to lead this Seminar is matched by my keen awareness of the daunting nature of the task. If discounts the Jewish cultural component of Buenos Aires—and, therefore, of its most important city, Buenos Aires, where over a third of the national population is concentrated, one is left with a very distorted image of Argentine history. Yet this is precisely what happens for Latin Americanists who lack an awareness of the importance of ethnic immigrant societies in Latin America, particularly those in urban areas.

The approach to providing a high level introduction to Argentine Jewish culture during the three weeks of the seminar will be conducted in terms of urban cultural production in Buenos Aires, although reference will be made to nonurban Jewish communities, as well as to communities elsewhere in Latin America. We will examine five major works of fiction by five major writers who are representative of four different periods of immigrant life in Buenos Aires: Alberto Gerchuoff (early twentieth century), José Rabinovich (the 1930s), Germán Rozenmacher (the 1960s), and Alicia Steimberg and Ana María Shua (the late twentieth century). All of the texts will be read in the original Spanish (actually, Rabinovich’s text will be read in the Spanish translation from the Yiddish), and the language of the seminar will be Spanish. For this reason, all applicants should have an advanced familiarity with the language such that they can read the texts with little linguistic difficult and participate fluently in the discussions of the seminar and meetings with local representatives of the Jewish community. At least twice a week, we will have no-host lunches with writers, artists, intellectuals, and scholars, and we will visit important sites of Jewish culture in the city. We are hoping to do one weekend excursion to one of the historical Jewish settlement communities located in the Argentine Mesopotamia northeast of Buenos Aires. The texts will be available upon arrival in Argentina, although arrangements will also me bade to obtain the texts for participants prior to traveling to Buenos Aires.

The dates of the seminar will be July 9, 2007, to July 28, 2007. Between July 29-31, the Latin American Jewish Studies Association will meet in Buenos Aires, at the Biblioteca Nacional, and arrangements will be made for those seminar participants who wish to participate in the LAJSA meeting as either observers or with scholarly presentations (see the Call for Panels and Papers attached to this letter below). The seminar will meet in one of the hotels in El Once, the Hester Street of Buenos Aires, immediately west of the major arts and entertainment district of downtown Buenos Aires. Participants will also be lodged in the hotel. While it is difficult, in the fluctuating economic contexts of Argentina, to project lodging costs, at the present moment in the sort of hotel we plan to use, the daily rate is $45.00/night, which includes breakfast and all taxes, as well as a personal in-room safe for valuables; some participants may wish to share a room for approximately $60.00/night. Eating and transportation in Buenos Aires remain exceptionally reasonable.

Our approach to the texts will be in terms of Cultural Studies. That is, we will negotiate, on the one hand, how these texts participate in broad and complex networks of social, historical, political, and cultural meaning, and, on the other, how the texts are meaningful artistic productions in and of themselves. More specifically, we will read the texts as creative interpretations of lived human experience and as participants in a vast network of forms of knowledge about urban life. Fiction does not merely represent individual and social reality, but in a very real sense it creates meanings about it. Fiction is often seen as a transparent “window” on human experience, but the critic needs to problematize that transparency and show in detail how complex the processes of literary processes of signification really are. Therefore, we will not simply read the texts for the information they might provide about the urban immigrant experience of Jews in Argentina (and, in a wider context, Latin America), but as very dense artistic interventions in societies creation of meaning and interpretation.

The participants we are looking for will hold the PhD in an area of the humanities and social sciences, and they will also typically be on the faculty at a U.S. academic institution. In their application they will be asked to justify their interest in the seminar in terms of the emphasis on Jewish Buenos Aires, on narrative, urban issues, and Jewish society and culture, and they should provide some indication of what they would envision their seminar project to involve. It is important to underscore that we are, as a consequence, not looking only for specialists in Jewish studies, but rather attention will be paid to those applicants who are able to transmit their enthusiasm for the scope of the seminar.

We will meet on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Sessions will be equally divid­ed between 1) the introduction to Buenos Aires a center of cultural production for Argentina and, indeed, all of Latin America, including back­ground information on the writers 2) the scope of Jewish culture in Buenos Aires, and 3) the examination in detail of the work chosen for reading and commentary. Each session will last three hours, 9AM-Noon. The Direc­tor will meet with each participant individually on Wednesday.

Participants will be able to secure access to research sites in Buenos Aires, and internet sites are widely available in downtown Buenos Aires. The public area of the hotel is equipped with a wireless connection. The seminar will have as its institutional sponsor Arizona State University, a suburb of Phoenix, the capital of the state of Arizona. Arizona State University is one of the five largest Research I institutions in the United States and the largest of the PAC 10 institutions. We will arrange for Visiting Scholar status for all participants, which will allow them internet access to the research bases online at Arizona State University, including downloading of periodical material.

We will create an e-mail listserv and a web site to encourage subsequent communication among members of the seminar and to provide a forum for a wider-audience discussion of pedagogical and research approaches to urban Jewish cultural issues. Participants will be provided information through these two forums toward participation in appropriate scholarly meetings such as the Latin American Jewish Studies Association, the American Associa­tion of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, the Modern Language Association, the Latin American Studies Association, and various regional affiliates (e.g., in the geographical region of Arizona, the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association). Moreover, a web site will be created prior to the semi­nar that will contain essential cultural information about Argentine, Buenos Aires, and Jewish immigrant society.

Submission will be encouraged of research work resulting from the seminar that meets the standards for research publication to Chasqui; revista de literatura latinoamericana or other similar publications. One of the mentoring goals of the seminar will be to work individually with participants on their professional research. This might involve revising already written work, such as a dissertation, seminar papers, or drafts of new work; for others it may mean assisting them in beginning to put together a research project. I will work with each student individually, toward the careful and systematic development of projects, and all projects will be treated as “work in progress,” since it is understood that it is often unlikely that professional academic work be fully completed in the period of a month. For those who already have a background in Jewish studies and/or Latin American literature, this will mean working with them on their already established research inter­ests. In the case of participants who come from other areas of Latin American studies such as anthro­pology, history, sociology, art history, and the like, it will mean exploring a dimension of Brazilian culture that could be incorporated into their work. In every case, the urban emphasis of the seminar will predominate. As a courtesy to those participants who choose to submit completed research after the close of the seminar, a professional evaluation will be provided of their essays.

Since the seminar will be held in downtown Buenos Aires (a city that remains remarkably safe, provided that one exercises reasonable security cautions), participants will have direct access to the marvelous cultural life of the Argentine capital. And since we will be there in July, the winter cultural season will be in full swing, minus, alas, the magnificent Colón Opera House. The Colón is undergoing complete renovation, prior to its 100 th anniversary reinauguration on May 25, 2008, when the 1908 inaugural production of Verdi’s Aida will be restaged. Perhaps some of you will want to arrange to return to Buenos Aires for that event!

Yet, there will be plenty else to see and do. In addition to a vibrant theatrical and musical life, Buenos Aires is known for its bookstores, its cafes, and, in general, for its intense nightlife. Because tourism is now a major economic activity for Buenos Aires, shopping is also first-rate, and the restaurants are legendary. Except for major tourist venues, eating out is unbelievably reasonable, and food—including Kosher dining—of all sorts is readily available. There are reputed to be over 4,000 pizzerias in a city 60% of whose immediate forbearers are Italian—although I don’t know if any of them are Kosher…

The hotel has modest gym facilities, and arrangement for participation in a nearby athletic club is possible for a few dollars a day. Jewish religious facilities abound for those participants interested in the religious dimension of Jewish culture in Buenos Aires.

It is important to understand what life is like in Buenos Aires is like in July. This month is the equivalent of January in the northern hemisphere. However, winters are mild in Buenos Aires, with temperatures rarely dipping to freezing, and then only in the deep of night or very early in the morning. The hotel and all major public spaces are well heated, and the most one can expect is some chilly weather, perhaps some windy days, and the ever-present threat of winter rain. Humidity is the bane of Buenos Aires, usually running 80%-90% as the norm: the Porteños (the citizens of Buenos Aires) say “What will kill you is the humidity.” However, for those of us who come from Arizona, some cold weather in July is a real treat, and your skin and hair will never be more lustrous from the humidity than in Buenos Aires! As for clothes, what is appropriate for late fall in most of the U.S. would be most appropriate. However, since July is getting toward the end of the winter season, you may want to take advantage of the end-of-season sales on winter clothing: Argentine woolen goods are exceptionally fine.

Buenos Aires, while literally at the end of the world, can still provide the opportunity for easy weekend access to other Latin American cities, such as Montevideo (the ferryboat ride across the river is very pleasant), São Paulo, Santiago de Chile, and other interesting points within Argentina. Package deals for Iguazú Falls (in reality, they are more impressive from the Brazilian side, Iguaçu) are readily available. But Buenos Aires is first and foremost a walking city. The so-called One Hundred Neighborhoods can be as lovely as anywhere else in the world, and walking is made a pleasure by the relative absence of crime and pollution and the fact that the city is mostly flat as a pizza. In addition to the cheap transportation mentioned above, Buenos Aires has an excellent subway system: the fare is about $0.25.

I will provide information to successful applicants on how to get to Buenos Aires, and how to get from the international airport of Ezeiza to the hotel.

The application cover sheet

The application cover sheet must be filled out on line at this address:

<http://www.neh.gov/online/education/participants/>

Please fill it out on line as directed by the prompts. When you are finished, be sure to click on the “submit” button. Print out the cover sheet and add it to your application package. At this point you will be asked if you want to apply to another project. If you do, follow the prompts and select another project and then print out the cover sheet for that project. Note that filling out a cover sheet is not the same as applying, so there is no penalty for changing your mind and filling out cover sheets for several projects. A full application consists of the items listed above, as sent to a project director.

Once again, thank you for your interest in the seminar. I am looking forward to receiving final applications by March 1, 2007, with final decisions ready by April 1.