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New GUMELAB Edited Volume: Latin America's Contested Pasts in Telenovelas and TV Series. History as Fuel for Entertainment

We are pleased to announce the publication of the Open Access book Latin America's Contested Pasts in Telenovelas and TV Series. History as Fuel for Entertainment, edited by Mónika Contreras Saiz and Stefan Rinke, and published by De Gruyter as part of the GUMELAB project.
The book examines how telenovelas and TV series have depicted Latin America's recent and often traumatic past. It analyzes their influence on historical perception, social memory, and the political culture of the region. This edited volume features case studies on the 20th-century dictatorships in countries such as Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil, as well as on topics like the drug war and the armed conflict in Colombia.
Through an interdisciplinary approach, the book explores narratives ranging from the glorification of perpetrators to the search for reconciliation and the construction of a collective historical memory. The volume offers valuable insights into the role of entertainment in conveying history and into the cultural and political dynamics of Latin America.

Two articles from the GUMELAB project published in the thematic dossier “Tell Me How It Happened: History and Memory in Times of Globalized Culture” by UFRJ (edited by Stefan Rinke and Pablo Turnes).

The GUMELAB project is represented with two articles in the newly released thematic dossier “Tell Me How It Happened: History and Memory in Times of Globalized Culture” (“Cuéntame cómo pasó: historia y memoria en tiempos de la cultura globalizada”). The dossier was published in the Revista de História Comparada of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and edited by Stefan Rinke and Pablo Turnes. It examines the relationship between art, memory, and historical trauma in Latin America. Comparative history provides a valuable perspective for analyzing the various ways societies deal with their traumatic pasts. The contributions explore processes of memory, justice, and resistance in the contexts of political violence and dictatorships in film, television, and literature.

Mónika Contreras Saiz and Hannah Müssemann, in their article “Pasados traumáticos presentes y ausentes en telenovelas y series. Una comparación entre las experiencias de Chile y Colombia” (Present and Absent Traumatic Pasts in Telenovelas and Series. A Comparison Between the Experiences of Chile and Colombia), examine the depiction of traumatic pasts in Chile and Colombia in series and telenovelas. Their analysis includes the production context as well as the historical processes and state-driven commemoration initiatives that can promote the production of historical telenovelas and series.
Holle Meding and Juan Pablo Sánchez Sepúlveda (Universidad de Santiago de Chile), in their article “Ecos políticos. La ficción histórica en torno a la dictadura chilena en la era digital” (Political Echoes. Historical Fiction about the Chilean Dictatorship in the Digital Era), analyze the role of historical fiction in the construction and negotiation of collective memory in Chile. They focus on audience reactions on social media to three Chilean productions about the military dictatorship.

"Manual for the use of digital methods in humanities projects. The experience of the GUMELAB project" by Hannah Müssemann, Gicela Aguirre García, Heisman Arcila and Alesson Rota.

In order to measure the impact of TV series and telenovelas on viewers at a national and transnational level, the GUMELAB project works with qualitative interviews as well as digital methods. Data from social networks such as X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube are collected, processed and analysed to find out how viewers comment on individual telenovelas and TV series online. This is possible thanks to the cooperation with the Institute of Physics and the Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics Group (GTFyMA) of the University of Antioquia (Medellín, Colombia) under the direction of Leonardo A. Pachón Contreras. The experiences of this interdisciplinary and international work in the field of E-Research have now been published in a handbook. The authors Hannah Müssemann (GUMELAB, Freie Universität Berlin), Gicela Aguirre García (Freie Universität Berlin), Heisman Arcila (guane Enterprises / Universidad de Antioquia) and Alesson Rota (Universidade Estadual de Campinas), who work as cooperation partners in the GUMELAB project, describe, discuss and analyse the individual steps that are necessary for such methods and also address the challenges and opportunities that the use of digital methods in humanities projects can present. Therefore, the experiences of the GUMELAB project and the systematic analysis of the handbook may also be useful for other future projects in which digital methods are to be used.
The manual is available online and in PDF in Spanish. The programming codes used are available online.

Article of Holle Meding and Hannah Müssemann "Volvimos a Los 80 sin querer'. Una serie de televisión como puente hacia el pasado chileno” ("We went back to the 80s without wanting to'. A television series as a bridge to the Chilean past")

The issue 182 of HISPANORAMA - the largest magazine for teachers of Spanish in German-speaking countries - focuses on cultural production in the context of the commemoration of the 50 years after the military dictatorship. Holle Meding and Hannah Müssemann analyse in their article "Volvimos a Los 80 sin querer'. Una serie de televisión como puente hacia el pasado chileno” ("We went back to the 80s without wanting to'. A television series as a bridge to the Chilean past") the reception of the Chilean series Los 80 and compare the national reception in Chile in the context of the social upheaval of 2019 and the transnational reception of the Chilean exile community in Berkeley.

Article by Mónika Contreras "Telenovelas, series y formación política en Latinoamérica" (Telenovelas, series and political education in Latin America) published

At the beginning of 2023, the book "Educación Política: Debates de una historia por construir " (Political Education: Debates on a History to be Constructed) was published. This was edited by Marcela Pardo and Stefan Peters. The book, published by our cooperationg institute
German-Colombian Peace Institute- CAPAZ in collaboration with the Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular/ Programa por la Paz (Cinep/PPP), brings together 14 articles from different disciplines that deal with political education work in Colombia. Our project leader Mónika Contreras Saiz wrote an article on the influence of telenovelas and series on political education. The book is available thanks to open access.

Article from Holle Meding "Colonia Dignidad between public history and entertainment: From the cold war to the streaming era"

Hasta el día de hoy, la cobertura sobre Colonia Dignidad sigue atrayendo la atención de los medios. Además de numerosos reportajes periodísticos, la historia sobre la comunidad autoritaria y anticomunista en torno al predicador laico Paul Schäfer y su colaboración con la dictadura militar (1973-1990) ha servido como basa para una gran cantidad de producciones audiovisuales, desde largometrajes de ficción histórica hasta documentales.

El artículo trazará las líneas según las cuales se desarrollaron estas producciones, poniendo su contenido y sus técnicas narrativas en diálogo con los contextos histórico-memoriales en los que fueron creadas. De este modo, mostrará la manera en que este corpus televisivo y cinematográfico ha incidido en los debates políticos e históricos en torno a Colonia Dignidad. Al mismo tiempo, examinará la manera en que la coyuntura política cambiante de Chile y Alemania de los últimos cuarenta años ha afectado a las producciones, desde la primera película Die Kolonie (La Colonia, 1981) de Alemania Oriental, hasta el original de Netflix Colonia Dignidad: Una secta alemana en Chile (2021).

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