Catalina Iannone === ​[00:00:00] Catalina Iannone: My way of making a more specific entry into that conversation is to focus on urban environments, to focus on cities. I am interested in the interplay between the way that we talk about spaces, the way that we talk about cities, neighborhoods, the people that inhabit them, and how that actually has an impact in the way that these areas develop. Jen Farmer: From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff. With departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics, and languages, among many others, the college always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new, now. David Staley: I'm joined today in the ASC Marketing and Communication Studio by Catalina Iannone, Assistant Professor of Spanish and [00:01:00] Portuguese at the Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences. Her research and teaching are grounded in comparative literary and cultural studies, with an emphasis on race, urban space, and visual culture on the Iberian Peninsula. Dr. Iannone, welcome to Voices. Catalina Iannone: Thank you. Thank you for having me. David Staley: Well, and you describe your research as either urban cultural studies or Iberian cultural studies, and I'd like to start there. So, what is urban cultural studies? Catalina Iannone: Sure. So, urban cultural studies would be the field of cultural studies, but with a particular emphasis on the urban of it all. So, cultural studies is a really large and nebulous, almost, field that you can kind of trace its origins to the seventies with scholars like Stuart Hall, who became interested in expanding the way we approach and conceive of [00:02:00] culture itself. So, I had a student this summer, I was teaching a course in Spain, and what we were doing was cultural studies, and she said that they told someone in a cafe like, oh, we're studying Spanish culture, and they said, how do you even do that? What even is that, right? You can't study culture. Well, you can certainly study culture, but I would say, it's hard to give a nutshell definition of cultural studies, but it is understanding what different people and society, society's groups produce about themselves, how they think about the world, the products that they produce in the process of making sense of the world, different ideologies and political structures that inform the way that we exist as different cultures. It's more broad, it's a way of [00:03:00] bringing in types of products or types of texts that one wouldn't normally think you could study. So, for example, in a department like literary studies, right? That's very easy to comprehend for the layman, it's, I'm studying literature, I'm studying books, right? David Staley: Books. The written word. Catalina Iannone: Exactly. And when you say culture, you're like, well, what are you studying? Well, you're expanding it such that instead of a book being a text, now anything can be a text. David Staley: An image, an advertisement. Catalina Iannone: An image, advertisement, food can be a text, there's an entire field of food studies, and then there's different ways to approach the study of these texts. You can study the material object itself, you can study the way that people talk about it, you can study different institutions and structures that inform how these things are produced. Film is of another part; I would say that you could include in cultural studies, it's easier for people to grasp because it's very legible. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: But cultural [00:04:00] studies is a way of saying, Hey, I'm gonna look at advertisements, I'm gonna look at, what I say, visual culture, street art, these broad objects that we make to make sense of our worlds, to talk about our worlds, that aren't as easily assigned a box or a genre, right? It's kind of like this nebulous space that you're working in. And then the urban of it all, is that when I'm talking about culture, so, okay, I talk about Iberian culture, so then you think, okay, what's that? Spain and Portugal, the Iberian Peninsula. So, when I'm talking about Iberian culture, or Iberian cultures, what does it mean? What are the things we produce? How do we think about these places? How are these places projected to the world? How is the world projected onto them, et cetera, et cetera? My way of maybe making a more specific entry into that conversation is to focus on urban environments, to focus on cities: the way that cities are built, the way that cities [00:05:00] are represented, the way that cities are conceived, and then, specific to my research, I am interested in the interplay between the way that we talk about spaces, the way that we talk about cities, neighborhoods, the people that inhabit them, and how that actually has an impact in the way that these areas develop. David Staley: Hmm. City as text. Catalina Iannone: Mm-hmm. David Staley: Is that a, is that a fair way to characterize it? Catalina Iannone: Yeah, city as text, but not, and so it's like the environment itself is a text, so the space itself can be a text, but also anything that's written about that space is a text. It's very broad. David Staley: And I want to talk specifically about your, research in your latest book, and I loved your description of cultural studies. Cultural anthropologists would also say that they study culture. Catalina Iannone: Mm-hmm. David Staley: So what, what are the differences between say, cultural studies and, say, cultural anthropology, or are there any differences? Catalina Iannone: I think there's a lot of overlap, and that's how we get into interdisciplinarity when it comes to different research projects, but the main thing that I get at that sort of differentiates [00:06:00] my work or makes my work categorizable as cultural studies is that, in each of my projects, there is an object of study. So, there is a specific text that I'm analyzing with these different analytical, literary, filmic, visual studies, theories, methodologies, tools. I do use ethnographic methods in my work, but with the purpose of analyzing what we call the object of study. So, there's always going to be a text, and if I'm working on a project and there's no text, then I'm probably going in a direction that I shouldn't be going in, or maybe not, maybe I'm just going into a different field at that point. But that was something that, it took me a while to kind of come to, where I wanted to talk about these cities, but I didn't really know how to make it fit into sort of the department that I was in and the training that I was being given, and this was a way that I found of making things fit. It's, you have your object of study, and then [00:07:00] you pull what is useful or relevant from a variety of fields and disciplines in analyzing that object of study. David Staley: Let's talk about this book, _Cities Beyond Crisis: Race, Affect, and Urban Culture in 21st Century Iberia._ Catalina Iannone: Mm-hmm. David Staley: Tell us, tell us what were your main findings in this book? Catalina Iannone: So, in this book, I am looking at the development or the evolution of two neighborhoods, one is in Spain, one is in Portugal. David Staley: Hmm. Catalina Iannone: They're both in the capital cities of Madrid and Lisbon, and they are both spaces that are historically marginalized for a variety of reasons that at the turn of the 21st century and into the 2010s, went under a rapid period of sort of evolution, development, that the most simplistic way of talking about it would be, oh, they were gentrified, right? David Staley: Okay. Catalina Iannone: And what I'm interested in in these books [00:08:00] is how these spaces, the way that they were spoken about, represented in marketing, tourism branding, and by community members themselves in a variety of texts, right, how that sort of shaped them, to prime them for this process that now everyone's like, oh, they're being gentrified. So, what brought us to this point? It's not like you wake up one day and the neighborhood is gentrified. There is a social process where different stakeholders contribute to this, and so I was looking at the culture of it all in this process. How does, how do different cultural texts influence the way that we think about certain spaces, and then now that the way that we think about those spaces has changed, how do those spaces then transform? And on the flip side, I'm interested in, in this book, in the second half of the book, so the first half I talk about sort of the way [00:09:00] that these neighborhoods were branded and conceived. These neighborhoods are now racially diverse neighborhoods, but they have a long legacy of stigma that is not always been about race, immigration, multi-ethnicity; it also has been about religious plurality, it also has been about people who are the working poor live there, it's also been people who were opponents of each country's respective dictatorial regime. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: Were centered in these spaces. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: So, we have these two areas that those features during this 21st century change, become kind of features of the brand. They're sanitized in a certain way in culture ,and they become the tenants of a brand. So, I'm interested in that because that tells us a lot about the utility of these marginal identities for consumer purposes. But then, on the flip side, and [00:10:00] this is another one of the key points of the manuscript, what I'm interested in, besides the way that racial difference, for example, is used as a sort of sanitized brand, and this is a term that George Yúdice uses as the expediency of culture, so, like when different cultural attributes become a consumable object or a consumable product. So, here I'm seeing how, particularly in these two neighborhoods, which are Lavapiés and Mouraria, racial difference becomes a part of the brand. They're multi-ethnic spaces, and that's the way that they're marketed, that's the way that they're advertised. But then, on the flip side, when people are contesting the way that these spaces are being gentrified, different feelings or ideas about race and hierarchies of belonging appear that might be unexpected when it comes to the way that we normally think about the [00:11:00] ideological binaries of left versus right. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: So, a lot of the attachments to certain visions of what it means to be, or ideas concerning what it means to be Spanish or Portuguese, and what it means to be authentic in a way that rejects plurality, particularly racial and ethnic plurality. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: You see this also in the process of contesting the evolution of these neighborhoods. So, you're either, on the one hand, racial and ethnic diversity is something to be used for branding, to develop the spaces, to attract people to the spaces for tourism and consumption. On the other hand, when that is being protested, the callback to the better times or the more authentic times, or the pre gentrification era, tends to assign hierarchies based on race, where [00:12:00] this mythical, like, white, pure Spaniard is at the top. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: And where others are there, but there's still this way in which the hierarchies prevail on either side of the ideological spectrum, and I found that very interesting. David Staley: Mm-hmm. What sorts of texts do you study in this book, to use your terminology? Catalina Iannone: Sure. So, in the first half of the book, well, first I have to explain the whole background of the neighborhoods and how they became the spaces that they are today, through different generations or eras of marginalization and urban development. Then, I demonstrate how tourism and conception was one of the primary vehicles for both Spain and Portugal to emerge from the precarity of the 2008 financial crisis. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: So, in that climate, one of the most resilient industries was the tourist [00:13:00] industry, right, and the consumer industry, the services industry. And so, the first thing that I'm showing is how around this time period, the post 2008 time period, the different ways in which these neighborhoods were put on display for the tourist and consumer industry. So, one of the first set of texts that I look at is Airbnb. David Staley: Mm. Catalina Iannone: Advertisements. So, I look specifically not just at the fact that there is Airbnb, because that's the most frequent critique, but how the advertisements on Airbnb, we're talking about these spaces, because as people will know who are familiar with Airbnb as a platform, oftentimes the most affordable, yet convenient locations or neighborhoods are most often the transitional neighborhoods, the neighborhoods that are experiencing gentrification, which is certainly catalyzed [00:14:00] or certainly pushed along by Airbnb being so prevalent in these spaces, so. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: There's large concentration at this time of Airbnbs, this is also the advent of Airbnb. There's a large concentration at this time of Airbnbs in both Lavapiés and Mouraria , and what I'm looking at in these texts is, how are the neighborhoods being advertised to draw people there? David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: So up until this point, they had been sort of stigmatized spaces that people would say, don't go there, and now, since there was an opportunity to capitalize on the proximity of these places, these areas to tourist attractions because they're both in the exact center of their respective cities, and the amount of available housing infrastructure that could be turned into short-term rentals. That is how these two places became hubs of Airbnb rentals. So, I'm looking at the [00:15:00] advertisements there. Then, I also look at tours, walking tours. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: Of the neighborhoods, and one of the walking tours in particular is put on by a neighborhood association with a vested interest in revitalizing the space for community members. And so, what I'm interested in there is the tension, at the time, between promoting tourism and making the quality of life better for the community. At the time that this tour was put on in this way, this community association still had on their website that one of the tenants was to draw tourism to the neighborhood. Now in Lisbon, they're like, no, please leave, please leave. So, a lot of the thinking about this has evolved quite rapidly since this period of time. And then I also look at, in that tour, the way that the tour is advertised, framed how that neighborhood is being explained to the public, [00:16:00] how the history of, ethnic, racial, religious plurality is cast in a digestible and appealing way for others or for outsiders, and I'm also looking at how these hierarchies, racial belonging, authenticity, hierarchies emerge in the way that they're talking about these spaces, even when promoting and celebrating these spaces. Then, I turn to how these branding tendencies impact the evolution of the built environment itself, so the tangible streets, plazas. And in doing so, I have a chapter dedicated to a market that was developed in a central plaza in the Portuguese neighborhood that was called a fusion market, and it was meant to be a tourist attraction [00:17:00] essentially that was building on this Mouraria as multicultural brand idea. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: And so, what was once a public plaza, part of it was sold, the rights to it were sold by the municipal government to a private entity that then took over the maintenance and the design of the space, and what they decided to do with the space was to make it this kind of like world's fair of diversity. It did not succeed, ultimately, so that is a chapter that I explore and that's a text, right? David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: I'm building on this all by demonstrating, how do we even get to this point that we're thinking about these spaces in such a way that now we're actually molding the space itself to fit the way that we're promoting the neighborhood? David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: So that's sort of the branding side. I also talk about photography projects, and then, on the flip side, in the second part where I'm talking about the process of contestation and how some of the same [00:18:00] discursive tendencies appear in the process of contestation, even though you would think maybe that they would be a little more progressive or may one might assume that those protesting gentrification, those protesting capitalizing on difference for a consumer public might have a more progressive vision of what it means to be one of these spaces in the 21st century. I look at examples of contestatory or oppositional narratives in the form of, in one case, a space itself. So, a market, it was a market that was a municipal market that was going to be taken over in terms of ownership by a private supermarket company, and in the wake of the anti austerity protests of 2011 in Madrid, this community group decided to intervene in the [00:19:00] market and take over a lot of the posts, stop the sale, or make it such that they could take over and it wouldn't be sold to a private entity, that it would stay in public hands, and their objective was to create a market for the community. And so, my question is, did they create a market for the community, or what market did they really create? That's how I studied that space. And this is sort of going back to when you said, oh, could you say you're an anthropologist as well, because in studying the way that they developed the space and what became of that space, I, at the time, did interviews with different people who had stands in the market and got them to talk about what they had done, why they had done it, and so forth, and a lot of that chapter is delving into what they're saying about that space and how some of the same tropes when it comes to authenticity, when it comes to this idealization of this sort [00:20:00] of like mythical version of the neighborhood, come out in those conversations. David Staley: So, I assume you've done some field work. Catalina Iannone: Yes. David Staley: Obviously, you've done field work. Does that field work involve, for instance, you mentioned a walking tour. Catalina Iannone: Yes. David Staley: Did you take that walking tour and try to, I don't know, experience it? Catalina Iannone: Yes. David Staley: I, I noticed the word affect. Catalina Iannone: Affect, yeah. Mm-hmm. David Staley: Is in your title. Were you essentially doing phenomenology, sort of a study of experience? Catalina Iannone: So, affect is in the title because one of the primary theoretical strands that I use in order to draw conclusions about the way that these different texts are talking about these spaces or these people are talking about these spaces. So, I use affect when I am studying the different texts to make that jump from what I'm seeing in the text, to the conclusions that I can draw about feelings, emotions, desires that are coming across in these spaces, in and about these spaces. In terms of if I took tours, yes, so the one tour that [00:21:00] I analyze, the portion of the chapter is a brochure that's advertising all of the tours that are no longer, they no longer do those tours, but I went on one of the tours just to kind of get a feel for how they brought you through the neighborhood and so forth, I did not go on all the tours. I also spent a lot of time at that now defunct multicultural market. I also had a lot of meetings with members of the community, so I would interview people. At the time I was a graduate student, and I didn't really know where I was going with my project when I was doing the interviews, so it's really funny looking back on that because the pieces that I ended up using of the interviews were not necessarily the answers to my questions, but it was sort of the conversation that happened in between the answers to my questions or more offhanded comments that were made, and that's kind of the beauty of looking back on that and thinking, oh, I really thought I was [00:22:00] doing something here, and it ended up going in a different direction. But I, I like that. David Staley: It's the nature of research, isn't it? Catalina Iannone: Yeah, it was, it was useful in the end. David Staley: What's interesting to me, you talk a lot about space and you're studying space. Catalina Iannone: Mm-hmm. David Staley: Again, I associate that with geography. Catalina Iannone: Mm-hmm. David Staley: So does that make you a geographer? Catalina Iannone: Geographers would not call me a geographer, I would say. I mean, I think you can tell from talking to me and I have a lot of strands going on in these projects. David Staley: That's what I project find most interesting, I think. Catalina Iannone: Yes. So, that's why when it comes to the text, you know, frequently you meet someone who's in a literatures and cultures department and they dedicate themselves to one medium. There are certainly mediums that I'm most trained in studying at this point, a lot I've expanded them, but I would not say that I am a geographer because I don't think that I have had the training or use all the exact research methodologies that geographers do, but there is certainly [00:23:00] overlap with the methods that I use, with the theories that I draw on, with the schools of thinking with cultural geography. But I guess nebulous is the best way to categorize my work, because I sort of exist in these spaces in between the disciplines where I'm taking a little bit of this, I'm taking a little bit of that, that is useful for drawing conclusions or forming arguments about the spaces that I am studying or the texts about the spaces that I am analyzing or drawing conclusions about. And then, you know, and then the space itself is a text that I'm analyzing and drawing conclusions about. So, I probably could have been a geographer, I just, you know, wrong place, wrong time. David Staley: Or a cultural anthropologist, as we said Catalina Iannone: Or a cultural anthropologist or, yeah, or urban studies, pure urban studies, there's a lot of overlap. David Staley: Tell us about "The Atlas of Resistance". Catalina Iannone: Sure. So I, in doing this project in particular, and just my basic [00:24:00] interest in the relationship between what different communities, societies produce about the spaces that they live in and how that impacts the space itself, and this is a callback sort of to that plaza that I was talking about, that I see a direct correlation between the different narratives that were in the cultural zeitgeist at the time about this neighborhood in Lisbon, and then the way the neighborhood was changed itself in this way to fit this narrative, which ultimately was unsuccessful, and you could draw some conclusions about that as well. But because of my interest in that relationship, I wanted to see if there was a way that I could more comprehensively represent this relationship in a way that was not just the traditional scholarly monograph. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: This was also because of some of my frustrations, and I think you can see [00:25:00] this when I'm talking about it, where you're just, there's so many things happening at once, and how can you concisely articulate the layers of information that are going into the conclusions that I am drawing, because I say, oh, I need to explain this to you in order for you to understand this because that builds on this, and you have to know that what happened historically is also informed by this other detail. So, as a way to kind of wrap my head around that, I started dreaming up a mapping project that would visually bring together a lot of the different strands into one cohesive product that one could look at and register at the same time what the space is that we're studying, what has impacted the space over time at a more granular level, so like looking at a map of this neighborhood, but while you're looking at the map, [00:26:00] knowing facts about demographic change, about changes to the actual topography of the space, urban planning, urban design, and how that came to fruition or didn't. And then also, at the same time, be seeing the different cultural objects that I study in that same visualization. So, this was my little idea that, as it turns out, has a term, it's called deep mapping. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: Um, and sometimes you come to these crazy conclusions and people are already doing them, but I wanted to go beyond points on a map, which a lot of people do and it's completely valuable is, maybe exploring a literary piece through a cartographic representation. I wanted to go a little bit deeper with that, and that's how I learned about all of the possibilities if I were to bring GIS into my work. David Staley: Geographic information systems. Catalina Iannone: Correct. Which, I think the easiest way to think of GIS is a framework, a [00:27:00] cartographic framework like Google Maps. Google Maps is a GIS. David Staley: Sure. Catalina Iannone: That is GIS. So, there's different tools, there's different softwares, different ways of mapping, but all of that is GIS. So, I've been plugging away at this project that now puts me in the space of digital humanities, for quite some time, where I am trying to map the city of Madrid, and... David Staley: The entire city, not just a neighborhood. Catalina Iannone: Well, yeah, so I got a lot of feedback. I've gotten a lot of feedback over time, and this is a two-pronged issue, which is, it's not as simple as just saying, Hey, I want these things on the map, and putting 'em on the map. There's a lot more that goes into that. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: And I have learned that over time. And that's also as you're developing your expertise in the tools, and as not a geographer, I was not trained as a geographer, so I was learning about GIS from zero essentially. My initial idea was to just map this neighborhood that I have studied for a long time, Lavapiés, but [00:28:00] frankly, I think that it would be more relevant to demonstrate something on a broader scale, and it would also, it also separates my project, this project from my book. I don't want this to be just a companion piece to my book, I want this to be a standalone project. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: That's building on some of the ideas that I came across in my book. So, for "The Atlas of Resistance", the main idea is to situate different cultural texts, so we have spaces like occupied cultural centers, we have street art, we have film, we have literature, but it's a selection, it's a curated selection, situate specific texts in space and time to understand how the space of the city evolved around the production of these interventions that were contesting or opposing the way that the city was [00:29:00] evolving. So, this brings us back to the neighborhood and to GIS and to the parameters of doing research, which is you have to make that feasible. And the fact is, it's much more feasible to try to do all of this, to do a proof of concept with one neighborhood than it is to do the entire city. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: But, as we've been working on the project and as I've gotten funding for the project and I've gotten different support sources and I've been working with experts from geography, from the field of geography, from urban studies, there is a path forward that the platform that we're building can be the entire city of Madrid, but I'm still using Lavapiés, the neighborhood as the orienting poll for this discussion, for the time being, at what I'm conceiving of as the, prototyping phase, the proof of concept phase of this project. David Staley: What else are you working on? What's next for your [00:30:00] research? Catalina Iannone: Well, beyond this platform, which it's also interesting to be working on this platform at a time when digital humanities is not necessarily a nascent field, but it's a newer field, and we're still learning a lot about the maintenance and longevity of different digital projects. I'm certainly new to digital humanities or new-ish to digital humanities at this point, and so something that is a curious component of this is how does a digital project like this fit in the trajectory of a traditional scholar in the humanities? David Staley: Mm-hmm. Catalina Iannone: So, I would like to turn this mapping project into something that can be evaluated as part of my portfolio. So, be it a digital publication or something peer reviewed, essentially, is what will make this more than just a side project for me. So, that's big. [00:31:00] Beyond that, I have a few journal articles, presentations in the works. I don't always talk about cities, so one of my interests on the side is Eurovision. Do you know about Eurovision? David Staley: The, the song contest? Catalina Iannone: Yes. Yes. The, yes, the singing contest. Another way of thinking about what I do is I'm interested in identity and how identity is expressed and contested, particularly when it comes to race in Spain and Portugal, and so I have a project right now that I've been working on for a little while that is about Eurovision in Spain specifically, and it's just an article that I'm writing about a whole polemic that arose, around the selection process for Eurovision a few years ago. So, that's more of a pet project, I would call that one the pet project. But it's still, it's still very much in my scholarly wheelhouse, it's just a little bit adjacent to urban studies. And then [00:32:00] I am also going to be presenting a conference paper coming up that I'd like to turn into an article that is about activist tourism, the tensions that exist in that as a concept itself, in the form of these walking tours that are put on by a group called Conciencia Afro in Madrid that are about Black memory in the city of Madrid. I had the opportunity to take my students this summer on that walking tour, and there's a conference coming up about Blackness in Spain, race in Spain, in Barcelona in November. And so, I'll be working on this paper where I'm talking about memory practices and activist tourism in this case study, but also as a trend right now that we're seeing a lot of these types of walking tours popping up in different Spanish and Portuguese cities. David Staley: Catalina Iannone. Catalina Iannone: Yeah. David Staley: Thank you. Catalina Iannone: Thank you. Jen Farmer: Voices of [00:33:00] Excellence is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications Studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer.