Gender Stereotyping and American Film

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Heike Raphael-Hernandez
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2012 to 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 221326105

I am applying for financial aid from the German Research Foundation (DFG) because I got accepted as a Beatrice Bain Research Scholar at the Department for Gender and Women´s Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. I will be there as a research scholar for two months, in February and March 2012. I plan to use my time with the center to work on my chapter „Gender Stereotyping and American Film“ which will be one chapter for my habilitation tentatively titled Global South Immigration and American Film. In my habilitation, I am looking at different immigrant groups in US society that lead their origin back to Global South countries; I am interested in analyzing how they have been portrayed in US mainstream and independent movie productions. I am working with historical as well as contemporary production to see whether and how their presentations have changed and how mainstream American audiences have perceived them. By not just focusing on one particular immigrant group alone or two in relationships to each other, I should be able to discuss cultural, sociological and political topics and their cinematic presentations that are relevant for contemporary American society. For example, I analyze the discrepancy between real and persistent poverty especially among Global South immigrants in US society and the denial of such existing poverty in cinematic productions that in most cases still depict immigrants ascending from rags to riches. For my chapter „Gender Stereotyping“ I will look at the portrayal of non-Western women for Western audiences. American movies have had a problematic relationship with this aspect. While historical portrayals never denied that any exotic and so-called barbaric cultural presentation was really intended for the entertainment and for the sense of superiority of Western audiences, the last decades have seen a change. Now the non-Western woman seems to meet the liberal and educated Western audience whose members feel obligated to rescue her from her inferior culture. However, with all their laudable intentions, movies now sometimes reinforce pre-existing stereotypes. It seems that no other aspect serves better for satisfying narratives of the superior West versus the inferior East; here, in the case of film, the West offers to rescue women from the oppressing East. As a Beatrice Bain Research Fellow at the Department for Gender and Women´s Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, I am not just able to continue my research for this particular chapter. In addition, I will have the chance to present my findings to a group of experts who are all first-class scholars in the field of women and gender studies. The admittance into this research group carries the obligation, which is also an opportunity, to present one´s work to a scholarly audience for further discussions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants