232100 From Thunder Bay to Way Down ‘Yonder’: Road Movies in the Americas and Theories of Cultural Contact (S) (SoSe 2011)

As critics such Greenblatt and Clifford have pointed out, geographical as well as social mobility lead to new spatial contact zones for identity formation; routes increasingly replace roots in the attempt to define one’s positionality in a fast-paced world of globalization and digital medialization. With respect to social and sociopolitical changes it appears interesting to explore an artistic subgenre that historically has dedicated itself to narratives of mobility: The subgenre of the road movie. In this seminar we will explore how the subgenre of the road movie whose origins may be traced back to early examples of US cinema in the 1940s and whose contours as genre emerged more clearly in the 1950s and 1960s, has expanded its presence in the Americas. We will look at definitions of the genre and explore and discuss how variations of the genre, as they emerge in recent US, Mexican, Latin American and Canadian cinema, give us insights into new patterns of quest, escape, mobility, and reorientation and cultural encounter. Drawing upon an Inter-American comparative approach we will discuss in which ways local, national and transnational aspects of the genre can be differentiated. Essays from David Cohan’s and Ina Rae Hark’s classical collection The Road Movie Book (1997), from David Laderman´s Driving Visions (2003) as well as the introduction from Jason Wood´s 100 Road Movies (2007) will serve us as background reading material. Our cinematic focus will be on Courtney Hunt’s movie Frozen River (US), Bruce MacDonald’s Highway 61(Canada), and Carlos Bolado Bajo California (Mexico) among others.