CLAS Past Events > Spring Quarter 2009
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Tuesday, March 31
Dr. Ian Read, Assistant Professor of International Studies, Soka University of America
From Salubrity to Pestilence: Brazil's Untold Battle
with Plagues in the Nineteenth Century
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Between 1849 and 1899, Brazil was battered by waves of strange
epidemics. Several of the worst epidemic diseases were allegedly
unknown to Brazilians, including yellow fever, cholera, and bubonic
plague. Despite the enormous loss of life, the causes and
consequences of these unusual epidemics are barely known to historians
or scientists. There is little doubt that pestilence had profound
consequences on governance, trade, and immigration. During the first
decade of the twentieth century, Brazil's "era of epidemics" came to a
sudden halt when these diseases disappeared or lost their virulence.
What changed in the epidemiological environment to turn this alleged "cemetery to the world" into a place that was much safer in terms of
infectious diseases? This question and others will be explored in
this broad talk on the interaction of disease and Brazilian society.
Ian Read attended the University of Chicago (MA, MAPSS, 2000) and Stanford University (PhD, History, 2006). Before turning his attention to disease and medicine, he researched the United Fruit Company and the social history of Brazilian slavery. Professor Read has taught within the history departments of the University of Puget Sound and the University of California-Berkeley, and is currently faculty of International Studies at Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo, California. His research on Brazil's "Era of Epidemics" is supported by a grant through the National Endowment for the Humanities. More information about the project can be found at www.eraofepidemics.squarespace.com.
Monday, April 6 - Thursday, April 9
Society for Entrepreneurship in Latin America (SELA) Summit 2009
Times and locations vary. For full schedule and more information, visit http://sela.stanford.edu
Tuesday, April 7
Dr. Carol Wise, Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Southern California
U.S. Trade Strategy Towards Latin America Since the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Wednesday, April 8
**EM PORTUGUES**
Petronilha Beatriz Gonçalves e Silva, Universidade Federal de São Carlos
Ações afirmativas na universidade brasileira - em busca da qualidade acadêmica com compromisso social
12:15 - 1:05 pm
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
A professora Petronilha B. Gonçalves e Silva é professora titular de Ensino-Aprendizagem - Relações Étnico-Raciais da Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar), pesquisadora do Núcleo de Estudos Afro-Brasileiros/UFSCar e Coordenadora do Grupo Gestor do Programa de Ações Afirmativas da UFSCar. Possui graduação em Português e Francês pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (1964), mestrado em Educação pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (1979) e doutorado em Ciências Humanas - Educação pela mesma universidade (1987). Cursou especialização em Planejamento e Administração da Educação no Instituto Internacional de Planejamento da UNESCO, em Paris (1977). Realizou estágio de Pós-Doutorado em Teoria da Educação, na University of South Africa, em Pretoria, África do Sul (1996). Por indicação do Movimento Negro, foi conselheira da Câmara de Educação Superior do Conselho Nacional de Educação, mandato 2002-2006. Nesta condição foi relatora do Parecer CNE/CP 3/2004 que estabelece as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Educação das Relações Étnico-Raciais e para o Ensino de História e Cultura Afro-Brasileira e Africana e participou da relatoria do Parecer CNE/CP 3/2005 relativo às diretrizes curriculares Nacionais para o curso de Pedagogia. Foi professora visitante na University of South Africa (1996), na Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, in Cuernavaca, México (2003). Participa ativamente do International Research Group on Epistemology of African Roots and Education, coordenado pela Profª Drª Joyce Elaine King da Georgia State University (USA). Tem experiência na área de Educação, com ênfase em Tópicos Específicos de Educação, atuando principalmente nos seguintes temas: educação e relações étnico-raciais, negro e educação, direitos humanos, práticas sociais e processos educativos, políticas curriculares.
Thursday, April 9
**EN ESPAÑOL**
The Latin American Literary Dialogs Working Group presents
A Conversation with writer Martín Kohan
12:15 pm
Building 260 (Pigott Hall), Room 237
MARTÍN KOHAN was born in Buenos Aires in 1967. He studied literature at the University of Buenos Aires where he received a doctorate with a dissertation on the Argentine national hero San Martín, and where he currently teaches literary theory. In his work, Kohan combines lively story lines with reflections on politics and aesthetics, precision on linguistic and narrative terms with an acute sense of irony. He has published short stories, three books of essays, and the novels La pérdida de Laura (1993), El informe (1997), Los cautivos (2000), Dos veces junio (2002), Segundos afuera (2005), Museo de la revolución (2006), and Ciencias morales (2007). Kohan was awarded the Premio Herralde, granted by Editorial Anagrama, for his latest novel.
Lunch will be provided.
Thursday, April 9
The Politics of Identity: Status Movements in Puerto Rico working group presents
Lecture 1: Independence
by Manuel Rodríguez Orellana, Secretary for North American Relations, Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP)
5:00-6:00 pm
Q&A will follow the talk, and Caribbean food will be served afterward.
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Note: This is the first in a series of lectures on Puerto Rican status movements.
Lectures 2 and 3, Commonwealth and Statehood, will follow later in the quarter.
Friday, April 10
**EN ESPAÑOL**
José Carlos Chiaramonte, Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana "Dr. Emilio Ravignani", Universidad de Buenos Aires; CONICET
La 'Ilustración' en Iberoamérica: Una incierta realidad
12:15 - 1:05 pm
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
El propósito de definir la cultura iberoamericana del siglo XVIII—y las primeras décadas del XIX—, utilizando el concepto de Ilustración, ha mostrado serias dificultades, motivadas por las características de las innovaciones vividas en esos años. El intento de sortear la dificultad apelando al concepto de "Ilustración católica", puede resultar en realidad inadecuado para la naturaleza de las transformaciones culturales de la etapa borbónica. Este concepto que implica aunar dos rasgos tan poco compatibilizables como el deísmo predominante en la Ilustración y el teísmo propio del catolicismo, paga tributo a una voluntad periodificadora, maquinalmente clasificatoria, que hace al concepto general de Ilustración, acuñado para designar una etapa cultural de otros países europeos, un clasificador poco funcional para la particular naturaleza de la vida cultural ibérica del período. En vez de la tradicional imagen del conflicto entre razón y fe, ilustración y escolástica, medioevo y modernidad, el siglo XVIII iberoamericano sorprende por un panorama en el que se conjugan tendencias supuestamente incompatibles, pues amalgama rasgos de su tradición regalista, del reformismo escolástico, de las corrientes eclesiásticas de reforma de la Iglesia, de la filosofía y la ciencia del siglo XVII, y de diversas manifestaciones del siglo de las luces.
José Carlos Chiaramonte se graduó con título de Profesor de Filosofía de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de Rosario, Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Argentina) en 1956. Hoy es Director del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana "Dr. Emilio Ravignani" de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Profesor Honorario de la UBA, y también Investigador Superior del Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). Entre sus trabajos publicados se encuentran Formas de sociedad y economía en Hispanoamérica (Grijalbo, 1983), La Ilustración en el Río de la Plata, Cultura eclesiástica y cultura laica durante el Virreinato (Punto Sur, 1989; 2ª. Ed., Sudamericana, 2007) y Nación y Estado en Iberoamérica, El lenguaje político en tiempos de las independencias (Sudamericana, 2004).
Tuesday, April 14
Jonathan Greenberg, Lecturer at Stanford Law School and Stanford's Program in Public Policy
Investor-state disputes in Latin America
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Investments by multinational corporations and other foreign interests in Latin American states have led to significant mutual gain, but this is a history of controversy and disputes, small and large. In the last decade, two factors have coalesced to create a new chapter in this history: an intensified cycle of political and economic nationalism in a number of resource-rich Latin American states, and an explosion of claims brought to arbitration pursuant to the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investor Disputes (ICSID). I will discuss several illustrative cases including Bechtel’s conflict with Bolivia concerning a water privatization project that generated mass protests; Venezuela’s nationalization of foreign-owned Orinoco Belt oil fields; the recent ICSID claim brought by Occidental Petroleum against Ecuador; and the special case of Argentina, respondent in by far the largest number of ICSID claims. I will conclude with a brief discussion of how states and investors can take steps in advance to avoid disaster.
Jonathan D. Greenberg is a Lecturer at Stanford Law School and Stanford's Program in Public Policy. An Affiliated Scholar at the Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN), he is also Counsel to the Canadian firm Heenan Blaikie LLP and chairs the firm's practice group in international dispute resolution.
Thursday, April 16
John Waller, IFCO / Pastors for Peace
US-Cuba Relations and the Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba
5:30-6:30 pm
Dinner will be served
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Forty-eight years after it began, and eighteen years after the Cold War ended, the US government policy of trying to economically blockade Cuba continues, as the rest of the world seeks to trade normally with the island. While US citizens are free to travel to nearly any part of the world, they are not free to travel to Cuba. What is it about Cuba?
John Waller has been part of the worldwide movement in solidarity with Cuba since 1991 and has traveled there seventeen times. Since 2004 he has coordinated the annual Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba – which takes humanitarian aid and US citizens to Cuba without US government permission as a conscious act of civil disobedience.
He will talk and show slides about the caravan, the blockade, and Cuba, and give his assessment of the potential for a change in policy under our new president and Congress.
Tuesday, April 21
Dr. Matthew Restall, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History, Director of Latin American Studies and Co-Director of LiLACS, Pennsylvania State University
The Forgotten History of Black Yucatan
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Matthew Restall will be talking about his new book, titled The Black Middle, to be published by Stanford in May 2009. The book is the first full-length study of black African slaves and other people of African descent in the Spanish colonial province of Yucatan (today part of southern Mexico). The study is based on Spanish- and Maya-language documents from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, found in a dozen different archives (mostly in Spain and Mexico). Restall has sought to discover what life was like for a people hitherto ignored by historians. He explores such topics as slavery and freedom, militia service and family life, bigamy and witchcraft, and the ways in which Afro-Yucatecans (as he dubs them) interacted with Mayas and Spaniards. He concludes that in numerous ways Afro-Yucatecans lived and worked in a middle space between—but closely connected to—Mayas and Spaniards. The book's "black middle" thesis thus has implications for the study of Africans throughout the Americas. Restall ends by suggesting why this history has not been told before.
Matthew Restall was educated at Oxford and UCLA, and is now Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History at Penn State. He works on colonial Yucatan and Mexico, Maya history, the Spanish Conquest, and Africans in Spanish America. He has received NEH and Guggenheim Fellowships. Since 1995 he has published over forty articles & essays and ten books, including The Maya World (Stanford, 1997), Maya Conquistador (Beacon, 1998), and Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford, 2003). His most recent books are an edited volume, Beyond Black and Red (Albuquerque, 2005), and two co-authored volumes: Mesoamerican Voices (Cambridge, 2005) and Invading Guatemala (2007), published in Penn State Press's new Latin American Originals series. He is editor of this series, and also co-editor of Ethnohistory journal. In May 2009 Stanford publishes his new monograph on the history of Afro-Yucatecans, The Black Middle.
Wednesday, April 22 - Friday, April 24
Recordar el pasado, inventar el futuro: The Personal Documentary
Pigott Hall, Buliding 260, Room 252
Ten contemporary filmmakers from Latin America show their films and participate in panel discussions. The conference will close with a keynote address by Professor Leonor Arfuch, Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Featuring:
Marilu Mallet: DIARIO INACABADO (1982)
Mateo Gutiérrez: DF / DESTINO FINAL (2008)
María Inés Roqué: PAPA IVAN (2002)
Sandra Kogut: PASAPORTE HUNGARO (2001)
Héctor Salgado y Marianne Teleki: CIRCUNSTANCIAS ESPECIALES (2008)
Albertina Carri: LOS RUBIOS (2003)
João Moreira Salles: SANTIAGO (2007)
Lourdes Portillo: EL DIABLO NUNCA DUERME (1994)
Andrés di Tella: FOTOGRAFIAS (2007)
Marco Enríquez-Ominami: CHILE, LOS HEROES ESTAN FATIGADOS (2002)
Co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures
For complete schedule, click here.
Friday, April 24
Marco Enríquez Ominami, Director de cine, diputado nacional chileno, escritor
Chile, Hoy
12:15 - 1:05 pm
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
**EN ESPAÑOL**
Nacido en Chile en junio de 1973, pasa sus catorce primeros años en el exilio en París. Regresa a Chile en 1986, hace sus estudios superiores en filosofía y cine y se convierte en realizador de ficciones. En 1998 crea Rivas & Rivas, una sociedad que produce telefilms y spots publicitarios. Fue presidente de La Factoría, un consorcio de empresas audiovisuales chilenas y también lo fue de la Fundación ChileMedios desde marzo de 2005 hasta el mismo mes de 2006.
Filmografía parcial:
“Vine para decirte que me voy” cortometraje, 1994, 16 mm. “10-7”, cortometraje ,1996, 28’, 16mm. “La Mandarina Mecánica”, cortometraje, 2000, 16 mm. “Bienvenida Casandra”, largometraje, 1995, 78’, 16mm. “Cuello de loza”, ficción televisión, 1997, 16 mm. “Magallanes”, ficción televisión, 1998, 16 mm. “Marilú Jonson”, ficción televisión, 1999. “Debora”, ficción televisión, 2001. “La mujer de Samuel”, ficción de televisión, 2002. “La lotería de la vida”, serie de 8 telefilms, 2002. “Chile: los héroes están fatigados”, documental, 2002. El destino (episodio de La vida es una lotería), 2005. “Mansacue”, largometraje, 2008.
Su documental “Chile: los héroes están fatigados” se exhibirá en el ciclo EL DOCUMENTAL PERSONAL (Recordar el presente / Inventar el futuro) el día viernes 24 de abril a las 10:50 en Building 260 Room 252. Trata en gran parte sobre la vida, muerte y legado político de su padre, el líder del MIR Miguel Enríquez, caído en un enfrentamiento con agentes de la DINA (policía secreta de Pinochet) y elementos del ejército chileno en octubre de 1974.
Friday, April 24
Fire on the Line: Border Violence
1:00 pm
El Centro Chicano, 514 Lasuen Mall (Old Union Nitery)
Join a stellar group of foreign correspondents and Mexican reporters for a discussion of the war on drugs, its effect on border communities, and the implications of violence on border journalism and U.S. national security. Is the threat real? Can the story be covered fully and accurately?
Panelists:
Alfredo Corchado, Mexico Bureau Chief for the Dallas Morning News. Last year Corchado was awarded the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot award, honoring his years of groundbreaking coverage of Latin America and the U.S.-Mexico border. Corchado is a native of Durango, Mexico. Since 1984 he has written about life and death along the border – and the region’s social and cultural vibrancy – for the Wall Street Journal, the El Paso Herald Post and the Morning News.
Alfredo Quijano, Managing Editor, El Norte de Juarez, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. For more than a decade, Quijano has led a team of fearless reporters in covering crime and corruption on the U.S.-Mexico border. His coverage of the trafficking business and the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez set a standard for courageous local journalism in Mexico, and earned the paper international awards for outstanding journalism under fire.
Angela Kocherga is the border correspondent for Belo TV, a nationwide group of local stations. She has covered the border and Mexico for 20 years, and broke stories on the explosion of violence in Mexico, and about the Zetas, a unit of rogue ex-special forces soldiers who became traffickers.
Dudley Althaus has been bureau chief for the Houston Chronicle in Latin America for 20 years. Going back to the days of the notorious cocaine cowboys, Althaus has written about Mexico’s vexing drug problem and documented its growth into a national security threat to the United States.
Joel Simon is a former reporter in Mexico. He is Executive Director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. His first-hand experience reporting these stories has helped CPJ become a leading light in exposing dangers journalists face in covering the drug story. Mexico is among the world's most dangerous places for journalists.
The moderator is Ricardo Sandoval, Assistant City Editor at the Sacramento Bee, and President of SPJ NorCal. As a foreign correspondent in Latin America from 1997 to 2005, Sandoval covered crime, migration and insurgent movements – work that earned him awards from the Overseas Press Club and the InterAmerican Press Association.
Presented by: The Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter; The John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists; El Centro Chicano (Stanford); New America Media; and The Committee to Protect Journalism.
Tuesday, April 28
Dr. Mark Goodale, Associate Professor of Conflict Analysis and Anthropology, George Mason University
Revolution and Counterrevolution in Contemporary Bolivia
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Professor Goodale will analyze the consequences and meanings of revolutionary social change and counterrevolutionary resistance in contemporary Bolivia based on three years of recently completed ethnographic fieldwork.
Mark Goodale is an Associate Professor of Conflict Analysis and Anthropology at George Mason University and the Series Editor of Stanford Studies in Human Rights. He is the author of Surrendering to Utopia: An Anthropology of Human Rights (Stanford University Press, 2009) and Dilemmas of Modernity: Bolivian Encounters with Law and Liberalism (Stanford University Press, 2009); the editor of Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader (Blackwell, 2009); and coeditor of Mirrors of Justice: Law and Power in the Post-Cold War Era (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He is currently writing a book on revolutionary social change and the moral imagination in contemporary Bolivia.
Wednesday, April 29
The Mexican Student Association and the Mexican Studies Working Group present
Bruno Ferrari, General Director of ProMéxico
una charla EN ESPAÑOL
9:00 - 10:30 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Wednesday, April 29
Dr. Todd Ramón Ochoa, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Promises Made: Cuban-Kongo Praise of the Dead and the Overcoming of Fated Debt
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Building 200, Room 002 (Main Quad)
Free and open to the public; Lunch provided.
This event is one in a series of lectures on Race and Faith, presented by African and African American Studies & the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Wednesdays from 12-1, April 1-June 3, 2009.
More information: http://aaas.stanford.edu
Thursday, April 30
Demian Zayat and Everaldo Lamprea, Stanford Program in International Legal Studies (SPILS) Fellows
Modeling Justice. The selection of Judges and Justices in Latin America
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row [Lunch will be served]
Since the 1990s, selecting the most qualified judiciary has been a highly relevant issue in rule of law reforms in Latin America. Argentina and Colombia reformed their Constitutions to achieve this goal. Two empirically-based socio-legal studies analyze whether these reforms were successful for the case of Federal Judges in Argentina and Colombia’s Constitutional Court. We invite you to discuss with us the findings of our studies
- “Meritocratic or political? The selection of Federal Judges in Argentina”, Demian Zayat, JSM Candidate 2009
- “When accountability meets judicial independence: the nomination of Colombia’s Constitutional Court”, Everaldo Lamprea, JSM Candidate 2009.
Demian Zayat is a SPILS fellow from Argentina, who worked in judicial reforms from a Human Rights perspective, since 2002. He is pursuing a JSM degree at Stanford Law School during 2008/09.
Everaldo Lamprea is a SPILS fellow from Colombia, who works on Law and Society studies and Constitutional Law. He is pursuing a JSM degree at Stanford Law School during 2008/09.
For more information about the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies, visit http://www.law.stanford.edu/program/degrees/advanced/spils/
Friday, May 1
Mauricio Cortes Costa, Consul General of Brazil in San Francisco
Biofuels and Brazil
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Lunch will be served
Tuesday, May 5
Dr. Leonard Ortolano, UPS Foundation Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University
Rebeca Hwang, PhD Candidate, Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Environment and Resources, Stanford University
Delivery of Domestic Water Supplies by Cooperatives in Argentina
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Many of Argentina's citizens who lacked safe drinking water supplies have banded together to form cooperatives in order to obtain safe drinking water. Cooperatives typically provide a host of other public services including, for example, wastewater disposal, electricity, and telephone services. A recent survey of cooperatives in Argentina indicates that 580 of them are serving more than 850,000 households that might otherwise be without access to safe water. Cooperatives are unusual in the water supply sector because they are owned by their members, who are also the people receiving the water supply services. This allows for a degree of democratic control and special consideration for disadvantaged community members. This presentation focuses on three particular cooperatives in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area and examines their similarities and differences, with a focus on relationships between the cooperatives and the communities in which they work.
Leonard Ortolano is UPS Foundation Professor of Civil Engineering at Stanford. He is a specialist in environmental and water resources planning, with a focus on the implementation of environmental policies and programs in the United States and developing countries. Among his current research interests is his concern with delivery of water supply and sewerage services to disadvantaged communities. During his years at Stanford, he has served as director of Stanford's Haas Center for Public Service (2003 and 2006), and director of Stanford's Program in Urban Studies (1980 to 2003).
Rebeca Hwang is a Stanford student with the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources. After completing her Ph.D. course requirements and starting her dissertation on the role of cooperatives in delivering water supplies in Argentina, she decided to take a leave of absence to work with a startup in San Francisco called You Noodle. The company develops decision-making technology and tools for the startup world. Rebeca Hwang has a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering and a master's degree in environmental engineering from MIT.
Tuesday, May 5
Bryan Schwartz, Founder and President of Scattered Among the Nations
Jews of Color: In Color!
Presentation and Reception
7:30 pm
Koret Pavilion at the Ziff Center
Home of Hillel at Stanford
Jews of Color: In Color is a photo exhibition that brings to life isolated Jewish communities in India (Benei Menashe & Bene Israel), Mexico (Venta Prieta), Ghana (House of Israel), and Zimbabwe (Shona). On display at the Koret Pavilion, Ziff Center, from April 6 - May 31, 2009. Hours: Mon-Thurs 10am-11pm; Fri 10am-5pm.
Thursday, May 7
Central American Students at Stanford (CASAS) present:
Guatemala Past and Present: Confronting Racism, Violence, and Inequality
4:00 pm - Intro by Dr. Paul Wise, Richard E. Behman Professor of Child Health and Society
4:30 pm - Film screening: Digging for the Future: Memory, Denial, and Hope in Guatemala
5:15 pm - Discussion with the filmmaker, Evan Rodriguez
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Guatemala Awareness Series: Come and learn more about the Guatemalan civil war and the genocide that left more than 200,000 indigenous casualties.
Paul Wise is a health policy and outcomes researcher whose work has focused on health outcomes disparities by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status; the interaction of genetics and the environment as these factors influence child and maternal health; and the impact of medical technology on disparities in health outcomes.
Digging for the Future, a film by Evan Rodriguez, documents the living legacies of a brutal civil war in Guatemala. This sober reality of poverty and violence reveals the importance of unearthing the past in understanding present disparities. Yet equally profound is the beauty and eloquence of a people with a clear vision for the future.
Friday, May 8
Central American Students at Stanford (CASAS) present:
Dr. Cheryl Koopman, President of the International Society of Political Psychology; Associate Professor (Research) of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford School of Medicine
Psychological Effects of Genocide on the Guatemalan Population
12:30 pm
Free Guatemalan food & drinks will be served
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Dr. Koopman's research focuses on survivors of a variety of stressful events that include political and interpersonal violence. Dr. Koopman examines relationships between the severity of traumatic exposure and disease, previous life history, risk and resilience factors, and demographic characteristics with the symptoms of acute and other stress reactions. Dr. Koopman's research also focuses on social interventions that promote physical and mental health in communities.
Tuesday, May 12
Dr. Seth Jacobowitz, Assistant Professor, San Francisco State University
Funk, Favelas and Foucault: Representing Rio de Janeiro in José Padilha's Elite Squad
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
An instant sensation when it appeared in Brazil in late 2007, José Padilha's Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite) depicts the violent confrontations of BOPE, the special battalion of the military police, with the drug and gun traffic in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Based in part upon the hardboiled firsthand account of two former BOPE members, the film was controversial on both sides of the political spectrum for its depictions of police corruption and brutality. This presentation explores the impact of Elite Squad as a media phenomenon representing Rio de Janeiro to itself over the past two years, notably the musical and filmic genres Elite Squad traverses that helped to secure its tremendous popularity. This presentation also offers a critical reading of the film's prominent foregrounding of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish as an ideological master key to social inequality and complicity with "perverse institutions."
Seth Jacobowitz is an Assistant Professor in the Humanities Department at San Francisco State University. He received his Ph.D. in East Asian Literature from Cornell University (2006) and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University (2006-07). He was a Visiting Researcher at the University of São Paulo in the summer of 2008. His work on Brazil concerns the cultural history of Rio de Janeiro and investigating modernist cross-currents between Japan and Brazil in the first half of the twentieth century.
Tuesday, May 12
Beautiful Me(s): Finding Our Revolutionary Selves in Black Cuba
7:00 - 8:30 pm
Bechtel International Center
Beautiful Me(s) is the intimate travel diary of underdog students who travel from the Ivy League to the rebel state of Cuba. Within the elite cloistered environment of Yale University, the students come together from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds to form a collective based on their passionate concerns about racial inequality. As outcasts, they become intrigued by the revolutionary mystique of Cuba and its contentious relationship with the United States. After overcoming financial and political obstacles, the misfits take the field trip of a lifetime to the blockaded island.
In the streets of Havana and Santiago, they witness extraordinary hip hop, reggae and rumba performances and strike up conversations with Cubans from all walks of life. The group is welcomed into a raucous block party with hundreds of people in an integrated neighborhood. Behind a cultural curtain created by political conflict, the students discover that Cuban people feel a close affinity with Africans and African Americans, and are deeply committed to ending racial injustice. The Cuban people the group encounters are driven more by their principles of unity and independence than by any individual leader or doctrine.
The film's director, Robin J. Hayes, is a scholar and filmmaker who joined the Santa Clara University faculty as Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies and Political Science in 2007. She was the first person to earn a combined doctorate from Yale University in African American Studies and Political Science. After completing her bachelor’s degree in Metropolitan Studies at New York University with honors, she supervised a legal clinic for homeless families at the Urban Justice Center and facilitated human rights delegations and aid shipments to Cuba and Chiapas, Mexico as a national coordinator of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).
This event is presented by the Caribbean Students Association and the Cuban American Undergraduate Student Association as part of International Week at Bechtel International Center and is co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies.
Thursday, May 14
The Latin American Literary Dialogs working group presents
Gisela Kozak Rovero, Venezuelan writer, professor, and literary critic
Lecturas, escrituras y confesiones: escribir en Venezuela
12:00 pm
Pigott Hall (260), Room 252
Gisela Kozak Rovero es una destacada profesora, escritora y crítica literaria venezolana. Su novela Latidos de Caracas resultó finalista en el Premio de Novela Miguel Otero Silva (1999) bajo el título Rapsodia. También es autora de un libro de cuentos Pecados de la capital y otras historias. Su obra crítica incluye: Rebelión en el caribe hispánico. Urbes e historias más alla del "boom" y la postmodernidad (1993) y La catástrofe imaginaria (cultura, saber, tecnología, instituciones) (1998).
The talk will be in Spanish; lunch will be served.
Please contact Angela Weikel (aweikel@stanford.edu) for a pdf copy of Latidos de Caracas.
For more information, please contact Professor Jorge Ruffinelli (ruffin@stanford.edu) or Angela Weikel.
Monday, May 18
The Politics of Identity: Status Movements in Puerto Rico working group presents
Lecture 2: Commonwealth
by Héctor J. Ferrer Ríos, President of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) of Puerto Rico
5:30-7:00 pm
Caribbean food will be served
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Note: This is the second in a series of lectures on Puerto Rican status movements.
It was preceded by Lecture 1: Independence, and will be followed by Lecture 3: Statehood later in the quarter.
Thursday, May 21
Dr. Francisco J. Monaldi, Visiting Professor of Political Science and National Hoover Fellow
The Political Economy of Resource Nationalism in Latin America (and other regions):
Understanding the Cycles of Investment and Expropriation in the Oil Industry
11:30am - 1:00pm
Lunch will be served
Encina Hall Central, 2nd floor conference room (C231)
The talk will explore the sources of the recent wave of resource nationalism in Latin America’s oil and gas industry, the significant regional exceptions, and the similarities with recent developments in other regions. The case of Venezuela’s oil industry will be given special attention.
Francisco Monaldi is National Fellow of Hoover Institution and Visiting Professor of Political Science, Stanford University. He is the Director of the International Center on Energy and the Environment at IESA, Venezuela’s premier public policy and management graduate school. He is Professor of Economics at Andrés Bello Catholic University and Consultant to the Inter American Development Bank. He holds a Master in International and Development Economics from Yale and a PhD in Political Science from Stanford.
Thursday, May 21
Spring Fiesta 2009: Transatlantic
featuring performances by:
• Los Salseros
• Flamenco Cardenal
• Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble
plus plenty of good food and good company... and everyone's invited!
Celebrate with us
in the Bolivar House Garden at 582 Alvarado Row
5:00 - 8:00 pm
Friday, May 22
The Mexican Studies working group and the Mexican Student Association present
Emigration of intellectual capital:
How to reconnect with Mexican professionals and graduate degree holders abroad?
How to create links that contribute to the social and economic development of Mexico?
a discussion with DAVID LUNA ARELLANO, journalist with more than 10 years of experience in Information Technology, Telecommunications, Innovation and Productivity; since 2001 General Director of Manufactura, published by one of the largest magazine publishers in Mexico, Expansión Publishing Group
2:00 - 3:30 PM
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Tuesday, May 26
Dr. Héctor Hoyos, Assistant Professor of Latin American Literature, Stanford University
Aftershock: Naomi Klein and the Southern Cone
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Naomi Klein’s book-length essay 'The Shock Doctrine' (2007) draws extensively from Latin American history, theorists, and fiction writers. This talk elucidates such borrowings and theorizes about the place of Latin American literature in 21st century political culture.
Wednesday, May 27
Dr. Sonia Rocha, Senior Researcher, National Research Council, Brazil; Researcher at Instituto de Estudos do Trabalho e Sociedade (IETS); Tinker Visiting Professor at Stanford
Poverty in Brazil: The Recent Decline and Perspectives
12:15 - 1:05 pm
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Taking as a departing point the long-term evolution of poverty in Brazil, we will discuss the facts that describe the happenings of the last ten years to understand not only the sustained reduction of income inequality, but, since 2004, the decline of the proportion of poor as well. We will focus on how the main explanatory determinants are related to labor market workings and will discuss the contribution of cash transfers, especially those associated to BPC and the Bolsa-Familia programme.
Sonia Rocha has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne). As a consultant to the World Bank and senior researcher at the Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA), she developed conceptual and empirical tools for measuring poverty incidence in Brazil, ultimately disseminating an influential set of short-term and long-term poverty times series. She established locally-defined poverty lines based on the National Budget Survey, poverty lines that were then used to derive income-based poverty measures and to develop profiles of the poor and the non-poor in Brazil. These indicators were used by the World Bank for its poverty reports in Brazil. She has carried out fundamental research on income inequality, poverty incidence, consumption patterns, and labor market and social policy in Brazil. Since 1993 she has been Senior Researcher at the National Research Council where she is developing projects on employment poles, long term evolution of poverty in Brazil, expansion of public services in metropolitan municipalities, and distributive effect of income tax. Presently a researcher at Instituto de Estudos do Trabalho e Sociedade (IETS), Sonia Rocha is examining the rise of a dual income transfer system in Brazil, one that combines the old constitutional transfers with the new transfer programs encompassed by the Bolsa-Familia.
FRIDAY, MAY 29 (Rescheduled from May 19)
Oscar Reynolds and Lalo Izquierdo, master artists
The Black Music from Peru and Bolivia
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
**EN ESPAÑOL**
Peru's Black music has thrived since the 1950s, but Black Bolivian music is in danger of becoming lost: younger generations are losing knowledge of their musical legacy. Join master Bolivian flutist Oscar Reynolds and Afro-Peruvian drummer and dancer Lalo Izquierdo as they reveal how the roots of Black Peruvian and Black Bolivian music trace their ancestry to the African motherland, and how the slaves in a foreign land under Spanish rule persisted and survived through music. Witness indigenous instruments, dances, and a live music performance of their collaborative project, which includes material from Reynolds' recent travel to the Afro-Bolivian Yungas. Funded by a generous grant from the Creative Work Fund and produced in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences Traditional Arts Program.
Monday, June 1
Exclusive screening (pre-U.S. release) of
CHE EL ARGENTINO
directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Toro
in Spanish with English subtitles
with an introduction by Dr. Jorge Ruffinelli, Stanford Professor of Latin American Literature and Cinema
5:30-7:30 pm
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
co-sponsored by the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures
Monday, June 1
Andrew Zhou, BA Stanford '09 (International Relations, Music)
Senior Piano Recital & Exhibition,
featuring Rzewski's "The People United Will Never Be Defeated"
8:00 - 9:45 pm
reception to follow
Campbell Recital Hall, Braun Music Center, 541 Lasuen Mall
free admission
A recital of piano music in co-sponsorship with the Stanford Music Department by senior Andrew Zhou (International Relations, Music). The program will include rarely heard works by Bach and Schumann, as well as the hour-long "The People United Will Never Be Defeated: 36 Variations on ¡El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido!" by American composer Frederic Rzewski. Written in 1975, "The People United" is a mammoth, kaleidoscopic piece whose theme is drawn from the popular Chilean revolution song by Nueva Cancíon composer Sergio Ortega (1938-2003) that was performed by famous Chilean groups such as Quilapayún and Inti-illimani. After the 1973 coup led by Augusto Pinochet, the song has become the worldwide anthem of popular resistance--there are, among many others, Iranian, Filipino, and Ukranian versions of it. It was one of many songs that came out of the leftist Unidad Popular movement in the late 60s and early 70s that supported Salvador Allende’s Marxist government. This will be a rare opportunity to hear Rzewski's work live. Given its technical challenges and size, "The People United," a unique triumph of music whose political connotations only strengthen rather than erode its artistic quality, has only been performed by a handful of pianists. This recital will be supplemented by a small exhibition feature images and documents surrounding Chile in the early 1970s.
Tuesday, June 2
Dr. María Emma Mannarelli, Director and Founder of the Center of Gender Studies at the Universidad de San Marcos, Lima, Peru; Tinker Visiting Professor at Stanford
The Written Word, Women, and Secularization. Peru, 1895-1925
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Two printing presses in Lima, Peru, both owned by women and employing mainly women, were physically destroyed. The dismantling of the print shops, the first in 1895 and the second in 1924, was, among other things, a reaction to the perceived threat of the written word. Embodying a potential expansion of public culture spaces, the written word threatened domestic spaces and structures, such as kinship and the code of honor, as well as corporate powers such as the Catholic church.
María Emma Mannarelli is the director and founder of the Center of Gender Studies at the Universidad de San Marcos in Lima, Peru and is the author of numerous works on feminist history. She holds a doctorate from Columbia University and was named a Guggenheim fellow. She has a broad experience working in Gender Studies in both academic and NGO environments and was head of research for many years at the Flora Tristán Center in Lima. She is bilingual and has taught at the University of California, Davis and at Holy Cross College. Her first book on free unions in seventeenth century Lima, which has become a classic work in the field, was recently translated into English and in 2007 published by the University of New Mexico Press (Private Passions and Public Sins: Men and Women in Seventeenth-Century Lima).
Thursday, June 4
Johann Strauss, MA candidate in Latin American Studies
Alejandro Peter Zaffaroni, BA candidate in History and International Relations with Interdisciplinary Honors in Latin American Studies
Thesis Presentations
12:00 - 1:00 pm
reception to follow
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
Join us in congratulating our '09 graduates who have recently completed thesis projects.
Johann Strauss will discuss his masters thesis, "Bridging the Linguistic Divide – A Study on How a Self-Help Center Assists Spanish-Speaking Latinos Achieve Meaningful Access to the California Courts."
Alejandro Peter Zaffaroni will discuss his honors thesis, "The Adverse Impact of Neoliberal Reform on Equity, the Social Welfare System and Democracy in Chile."
Friday, June 5
The Latin American Literary Dialogs working group presents
Latin America, A Hologram
a public lecture by JORGE VOLPI
12:00 pm
Pigott Hall, Bldg 260, Room 113
Jorge Volpi (Mexico, 1968) is a recognized public intellectual and one of the most distinguished Latin American writers of his generation. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship and the Biblioteca Breve Prize for the international best-seller In Search of Klingsor (Seix Barral, 1999). Volpi studied law and literature at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and received a Ph.D. in Spanish philology from the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. Along with Ignacio Padilla, Eloy Urroz, and Pedro Ángel Palou, he wrote the "Crack" manifesto (1996), a text that anticipated a new wave of post-magical realist writing in Latin America. Among his essays, La Guerra y Las Palabras (2004) analyzes the zapatista uprising in Chiapas. He currently directs the Mexican cultural TV station Channel 22.
At Stanford, Volpi will address the distance between Latin America and its representations.
The talk will be in English; a light reception will follow.
Monday, June 8
A Bilingual Poetry Reading by Magdalena Chocano Mena
12:00 pm
Bldg 260, Room 216
Renowned Peruvian poet Magdalena Chocano has published numerous books of poetry, including:
Poesía a ciencia incierta (Lima: Safo ediciones, 1983)
Estratagema en claroscuro (Lima: Instituto Nacional de Cultura, 1987)
Poems read in London/Poemas leídos en Londres (Londres: Lagniappe, 2003)
Contra el ensimismamiento (Barcelona: Ed. Insólitas 2005)
Otro desenlace (Londres: Veerbooks, 2008)
This page last updated June 17, 2009