Expanding boundaries, alternative visions: Staging representations of popular urban women in contemporary Mexican chronicle, film and photography

Using an interdisciplinary approach informed by gender theory, theoretical explorations on public and private spaces in Mexico City, I establish how space, place and gender are reproduced in chronicle, film and photography. My analysis is divided into three chapters, each discussing a specific genre. The written and visual texts I address in this project are framed by dominant ideologies of gender, space and identity. My project begins with an exploration of Elena Poniatowska's and Cristina Pacheco's chronicles. By looking at these two authors, I show that participating in the public sphere is more that just a way to establish an alliance to the marginal classes, but also a personal search for an identity.;The project continues with a discussion of Maria Novaro's 198b film Lola and Marisa Systach's 2000 Perfume de violetas (nadie to oye). These films address gender, violence and the crisis of national identity in Mexico in innovative ways. Both Sistach and Novaro present female characters in their movies in order to portray the tensions that exist for women circulating within Mexico City's urban space. The works of these two directors undermine the idea that women's participation in the public and private sphere is inscribed by masculine discourse.;The latest chapter addresses Maya Goded's and Lourdes Grobet's photographic projects. Both Maya Goded and Lourdes Grobet highlight the gendered nature of contemporary urban settings, using Mexico City as the locus for their work. Their non-traditional representations of women serve to complicate and clash with hegemonic constructions of national identity, 'women's' places within these discourses, individual identity as constructed by the social relations, and the local cultural context.;I address three seemingly disparate genres in this project because by doing so, a more complete and nuanced discussion of representation, identity and urban space can be achieved. Additionally, each of the genres holds social significance and cultural weight for a particular historical moment, each growing out of or a response to the fact that the urban center has continuously evaded definition.