MARY CATHERINE RUSSELL

As we’d already started in Pamplona, Burgos was the next big city of our trip.  Reaching Burgos was both painful and fun, tendonitis in the mornings but feeding turtles and meeting new friends at night.  Churches approaching Burgos reassured me that my thesis was legit– I found many examples of sirens and harpies even in the smaller towns.

Burgos was definitely my favorite church of the entire trip.  We took an 1.5 hour audio tour of the church (which I greatly preferred to something guided by an actual person).  We ordered the tour in Spanish and the receptionist laughed and explained that it spoke very quickly, but we committed to the Spanish version (which turned out to be very easy to understand).  The church was gorgeous, and provided me with many imges for my research.

At the bottom of the church was a modern art exhibit, which consisted of bells and a rosary made of skulls draped around a large cross.  Once I upload some of the photos to flickr, I’ll link them here.

I left the States with excitement, lofty goals, and a serious doubt in my ability to communicate effectively. After years and years of Spanish, I was nervous just asking for juice on the plane! (Though hearing they had pineapple juice made it a little easier…) John, our fearless leader, pushed me to ask about our flight details in Spanish when we landed in Madrid.  Having never been through customs, worrying we didn’t have enough time in our layover, and wondering if my precious contact solution was going to make it through baggage claim, I didn’t think I could come up with the words to express anything.

However the nice man at the airport didn’t skip a beat when I asked him if my box would go to Pamplona.  For me, the scariest thing for someone to do is to ask me to repeat myself in Spanish.  Even if I just spoke too quietly, any confidence about what I was saying is shot.   Thankfully, the man heard me and quickly responded– our package didn’t need any help getting to Pamplona.

After leaving the airport– Pamplona’s was tiny– we had our first strange adventure. Who needs a taxi when you’ll be walking across a country?  We hitched a ride on a cheap bus and eventually found our hotel.

Pamplona made me antsy. Seeing sights and playing tourist felt strange when I’d been mentally preparing myself for the pilgrimage.  It was hard to imagine that in a few days I’d be starting five weeks of walking.

But walk we did.  They say the Camino comes in three parts–the physical, the mental, and the spiritual.  I knew it would be hard, but little did I know how incredibly difficult the first few days would be.  I had blisters and tendonitis, my feet hurt with every step.  There were only three of us, and we stuck together, so I felt like I was holding everyone back.  I think I’ll remember the first few days the best, because don’t we remember painful things so much more clearly?   I won’t forget climbing up a steep and muddy hill towards Arres, nearly crying because of the pain.  (Though there was a nice view.)

We arrived in town in the afternoon, and after a shower and lunch, it always felt like a new day.  Even though my foot wouldn’t stop hurting, having clean clothes made the rest of the day bearable.   Showers, whether warm or cold (and sometimes both), gave me the energy to do the research I came to do.

While I normally use this for academic purposes– putting up essays and reflections– I was extremely lucky to receive a Charles Center Summer Scholarship, and one of the requirements of the award is to blog about my experiences.  The money I received from the Charles Center allowed me to take part in the most amazing and rewarding experience of my life, and I am very grateful to have had the opportunity.

On May 20th, 2009, I hop on a plane.  I’ll travel from DC to Madrid to Pamplona, then take a taxi to Roncesvalles.  In my backpack I’m bringing: 3 shirts, 3 pairs of pants/shorts, my camera, a (summer) sleeping bag, a Camelback, sunscreen, a journal, various toiletries, a passport, and a debit card. For five weeks and five hundred miles, I am making the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.  Along the way, I will be researching the representation of women in religious artwork, primarily examining the use of sirens and harpies to depict women in a misogynistic fashion.

I considered following the format of this blog– having the rest of my entries follow in the comments of this one– however I think there is something more aesthetically pleasing (and more to the concept of “blog”) to have them in individual posts.  So thanks for reading, and thanks Charles Center!

This course explores the variety of ways that women were constructed and (re)presented in the visual arts of pre-Hispanic and colonial Latin America, particularly in the viceregal centers of Mexico and Peru.  We will investigate women’s lives through the nature and history of their depictions, from the indigenous tradition of the codices through female saints, nuns, portraiture, allegory, and genre, in terms of the ways that these images reflect the roles, perception, and activities of women during the colonial era. A short section at the end of the course will consider some of the ways that these issues resonate today in the work of contemporary Peruvian women’s art cooperatives.  Readings will be drawn from a broad range of disciplines and methodologies, including art history, anthropology, archaeology, gender studies, literature, ethno-history, and religious studies.

For the course I wrote a paper about the traveling statue of La Misericordia (the Virgin of Mercy) in colonial Ecuador and Peru, which can be read in the comments of this entry.

As I applied for an Honors Fellowship at William and Mary, my project was put online and made open to other donors. If you’d like to read a short version of my project proposal or contribute to my research, here’s the link:

http://honorsfellowships.wm.edu/?p=75

Thanks for looking!

Today I presented at the Mid-Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies 30th conference, which was held at the College of William and Mary. I joined three other undergraduate students from various other colleges to speak on a panel titled “Representing the Caribbean: Cultural Memory and (Trans)national Flows”. Other students presented on the politics of the Dominican Republic, Modern-Day Slavery in the Dominican Republic, and the effects of magical realism in “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz.

I presented an essay I wrote in my Urban Images course titled “Stone Crazy Prophets: Como el Nuyorican Poet’s Society creo espacio publico con un microfono”. The presentation outlined my paper, describing Rosenthal’s views of public space and how nuyoricans used a modern interpretation of public space to make their narrative voice heard. Through modern technology such as YouTube and television shows, poets have publicized opinions that were previously unknown.

This past semester I took a course with Professor Arries called “Teaching Methods of ESL/EFL”. I’ve tutored elementary school ESL students before, and have been considering a career in Education. The class helped me learn various teaching strategies from lesson planning to methods of managing different age groups and ability levels. The class included a teaching component, for which Professor Arries videotaped each of us teaching four different lessons over the course of the semester, and also included a community service component that required us to work with ESL students in the Williamsburg community.

I chose to work with CPALs (Community Partnership for Adult Learners), which met Thursday nights and helped local adults practice their English. I worked with some adults who were just learning the alphabet and basic phrases, and with others who simply needed an outlet to practice conversational skills.

In the comments of this entry, you can read the response I submitted at the end of the semester.

• 9/28/2008: “Los Olímpicos de ’68: como el DF no llegó a ser una ciudad global”

This paper takes as a point of departure, the work of Néstor Garcia Canclini in “From National Capital to Global Capital: Urban Change in Mexico City”. Canclini proposes that cities must have international tourism, a multicultural population, and a presence of the artistic and scientific elite, all of which qualifications the Mexican government felt could be achieved by hosting the Olympics in 1968. My paper attempts to elaborate on Canclini’s ideas through an analysis of the intellectual voice in Paco Ignacio Taibo’s ’68. I am particularly interested in disparity between the government’s assertions about the events of 1968 and the truth known by the artistic and scientific elite of Mexico as it relates to the creation of an urban identity. I propose that there must be the support of the artistic and scientific elite in order for a city to become a global city, and that the mistrust created by the Mexican government prevented Mexico City from becoming a global city.

• 11/5/08: “La unificación del espacio publico y el espacio privado y la perdida del individuo durante el Bogotazo”

This paper takes as a point of departure, the work of Anton Rosenthal in “Spectacle, Fear, and Protest: A Guide to the History of Urban Public Space in Latin America”. Rosenthal proposes that urban life is a constant struggle for public space and that political dissent is often shown through a violent taking of control of a public area. My paper attempts to elaborate on Rosenthal’s ideas through an analysis of the union of the public and private spheres of the people protesting during the Bogozato through a look at Sady Gonzalez’s photos from “El saqueo de una ilusión”. I am particularly interested in the loss private emotions of the participants as they succumb to a group mentality and the blurring of the line between the public and private spheres. I propose that during moments of political dissent private spaces are converted into public spaces and there is a loss of private emotion in favor of public dissent.

• 12/08/08: Stone-Crazy Prophets: Como el Nuyorican Poet’s Café creó espacio públicos con un micrófono

This paper takes as a point of departure, the work of Anton Rosenthal in “Spectacle, Fear, and Protest: A Guide to the History of Urban Public Space in Latin America”. Rosenthal proposes that political and emotional dissent is often represented through spectacle and protest in the fight for urban public space. My paper attempts to elaborate on Rosenthal’s ideas through an application of Latin American public space to a symbolic public space in New York City. I am particularly interested in literature and performance as a form of political dissent. I propose that the Nuyorican Poet’s Café created a way for a marginalized community to express itself in the only public space available, the air, and that the Rosenthal’s spectable of protest could be poetry.

These are essays I wrote for Professor Longo’s Urban Images course, in Fall 2008. Essays can be read in the comments of this entry.

The course followed the basic premise articulated by the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton that poets must keep faith with poetry, with beauty. Alongside Dalton’s premise about aesthetics, we considered positions on social justice, specifically Sam Hammil’s idea that the history of poetry is filled with advocacy, private and public and Martín Espada’s statement that all justice is poetic. At the end of the semester we compiled responses to form a portfolio of essays and/or poetry, and the following poems are from my final portfolio:

Nerudian style poems:

• Oda al Cigarillo

• I y II

Poems in the style of Martin Espada:

• X (versions in English and Spanish)

• why i should have listened to mom and majored in computer science

My “Local and Global Issues in 20th Century Poetry” course organized a poetry reading which took place in the Botetourt Gallery of Swem Library this afternoon.  Called “EarthVisions”, the event attempted to show the importance of poetry as a unifying force.  Many poems had a natural theme, however students and professors read a variety of poems.

I read a poem I wrote for my final portfolio entitled “why I should have listened to mom and majored in computer science”. The poem can be read in the comments of my portfolio post.

Pictured is Bobby Moeller, another Hispanic Studies student who presented at the event.