
Participants from Professor Katey Borland's Mayterm fieldschool present lessons learned about ethnography, filmmaking, and short-term cultural immersion in the port city of Bluefields on Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast. Mayo Ya is a month-long festival of Afro-descended Nicaraguan culture that prominently features maypole dancing and music. Like regionally distinctive groups elsewhere in the world, Blufileños struggle to maintain their cultural identity in the face of inmigration, outmigration and the nationalization of their festival arts. Ohio State students struggle to simultaneously understand and responsibly represent a place and a culture in transition. Clips will be shown.