The Graduate Student Workshop in American Studies is pleased to present:

Shelly Liebembuk

Performing Cultural Identity in the Borderlands: Spatial Negotiation in the Work of Urban Curator Teddy Cruz

Wednesday, October 27, 2010, 4-6 pm

Munk School of Global Affairs, Room 208N



If the performance of cultural identity takes place through the range of socio-cultural practices that make up community building, then urban planning is one such practice that palpably concretizes a community’s performance in space. When looking at borderland cultures, however, urban planning tends to mirror dominant cultural policy, reinstating cultural hegemony and ignoring variants. Urban theorist Teddy Cruz has attempted to mediate this problem through a remapping of borderland space which takes into account not only official urban structures, but also the extensive illicit practice he terms ‘encroachment’. Taking Cruz’s remapping of San Ysidro—a borderland community in San Diego, California—as its starting point, this presentation will examine the dialogic relationship between legal and illicit urban structure in borderland communities as a complex negotiation and, ultimately, performance of a polymorphous cultural identity.

Shelley Liebembuk is a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto’s Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama. She holds an Honour Bachelors degree in English—Theatre & Drama, and Philosophy from McGill University, and a Masters degree in Drama from the University of Toronto. Her current research interest is in intercultural performance practice, focusing on urban cultural contexts.

All events are free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged via: http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/Events.aspx

(Please Note: registration does not guarantee a space, which is available on a “first come, first served” basis.) The Munk School of Global Affairs is a wheelchair accessible building.