Recovering Ernestina G. Fleischman’s Life and Work
Ana María Díaz-Marcos (Professor, LCL, UConn)
with a response by Oscar Guerra (DMD, UConn)
Wednesday, November 8, 2023, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)
The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.
Why do so many women vanish from history after leading exceptional lives? Ernestina González Fleischman (1896–1976) is an emblematic case that illustrates the erasure of women´s agency and achievements from historical accounts.
Ernestina led an awe-inspiring life marked by political activism, international visibility, and intellectual relevance. She was a librarian, a Spanish teacher, a writer, and an antifascist leader who tirelessly engaged in public activities. Her voice became a staple for the Spanish-speaking community in New York who listened to her nightly radio program Voice of fighting Spain during the forties. She published in at least three New York-based Spanish newspapers, and delivered public speeches on topics of human rights, antifascism, feminism, anti-imperialism, and peace efforts. Her highly international profile illustrates women’s transnational protests at their best, as she actively participated in women’s antifascist networks in USA, Spain, France and Mexico. It is difficult to explain how such a prominent figure in the arena of the anti-fascist Hispanic hubs in the United States and Spain has been wiped out from history.
This talk documents the archival research that has made possible the recovery of her legacy and her writings and will focus on crucial moments in her biography: a personal tragedy during the Spanish Civil War, two exiles, her leadership and fierce activism in New York arena of civil rights, and the investigation and trial by the Committee on Un-American activities.
Ana María Díaz-Marcos is a Professor of Spanish Literature at the Department of Literatures, Cultures and Languages. Her research interests include Spanish literature and theater, feminism and gender studies, and Hispanic antifascism in the press. She has published a monograph on representations of fashion in modern Spanish literature entitled The Age of Silk (2006). Her book Thinking out of the Box: Spanish Writers and the Quest for Emancipation (2013) examines the rising of a feminist consciousness in Spain. She is the editor of an open-access anthology of plays written by contemporary Spanish women playwrights: Escenarios de crisis: dramaturgas españolas en el nuevo milenio (2018). Her latest Digital Humanities projects include a bilingual exhibition about the history of the antifascist newspaper La voz (1937-1939) that was published in New York, a collection of articles from that newspaper that illustrate the intersections of Pan-Hispanic feminism and antifascism in the thirties, and a collection of cartoons from the press entitled “Sketches of Harlem” by Puerto Rican artist José Valdés Cadilla, that is on display at CUNY this Fall.
Oscar Guerra is an Emmy® award-winning director, researcher, and educator. He is an Associate Professor of Film and Video at the University of Connecticut and a producer at PBS FRONTLINE. Dr. Guerra’s focus is storytelling that promotes critical thinking and social investment. He aims to produce media that provides a way for underrepresented groups to share and disseminate counterstories, contradict dominant and potentially stereotypical narratives, and strengthen their voices and identities. Dr. Guerra’s career spans the spectrum of television environments, music, multimedia production, documentaries for social change, promotional video, immersive media, and vast international experience.
Access note
If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.
