Contact Zone Arts by Mary Louise Pratt Contact Zone Arts by Mary Louise Pratt has opened up a whole new concept for our classroom. The new term "contact zone" appeared, and Pratt defined it as "social spaces in which cultures meet, clash, and engage with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetric power relations, such as colonialism, slavery, or their consequences as they are experienced in many parts of the world today." The contact zone idea is intended in part to contrast with the ideas of community that trigger much of the thinking about language, communication and culture. According to Pratt, the two distinctive phenomena of the contact zone are the autoethnographic text and transculturation. One of the characteristics of autoethnographic text is that it usually involves an extensive process of collaboration by people of different social and intellectual classes. Writing lessons might have some meaning with the contact zone because of this group engagement process. During this process every marginalized and hidden voice can be heard, not to mention every single member can learn how to form and negotiate an opinion at the outbreak of all the conflicting opinions of group members with different cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, transculturation is defined as “processes through which members of subordinated or marginalized groups select and invent materials transmitted by a dominated culture.” An example could be the adoption of some features...