CLAS Events > Winter Quarter 2006-07 Calendar

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"And Then They Became Democrats: The Transition's Myth and the Pragmatic Approach to History in Spain"

JOAN RAMON RESINA , Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Literature; Director of the Institute for Iberian Studies

Joan Ramon Resina has held teaching positions at Cornell University, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Northwestern University. He specializes in Spanish and Catalan literatures with emphasis in the modern period. His interests are amply comparative, with a strong cultural component, ranging from urban studies to the collective memory and issues of political and social scale, such as the relation between the local and the global. More generally, his interests include modern and contemporary European narrative, Literary Theory, History of Ideas, Film Studies, Iberian Cultural and Political History. Currently, he is concerned with the cultural foundations of violence and war, and with the thorny issue of reparations. He has received two Ph.D.'s from two universities: UC Berkeley (Comparative Literature) and the University of Barcelona (English Philology).

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"Corrupting Vapors: Public Health and Disease in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro"

ZEPHYR FRANK, Assistant Professor of Latin American History, Department of History

Zephyr Frank obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign in 1999. He specializes in Latin American history, with an emphasis on the history of Brazil. He teaches courses on Latin America focusing on the family, economy, and culture and politics. His other interests include social structure, wealthholding, and slavery.

Bolívar House Film Series

El Espinazo Del Diablo (The Devil's Backbone) - Mexico/Spain, 2001

"What is a ghost?" asks Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro's (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy) supremely menacing supernatural tale of greed and sorrow set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. Although fear of the unknown strikes a chord deep within the collective psyche, Del Toro shows that these things of a more familiar persuasion may, in fact, be the driving force behind their vengeful motivations.

Please visit http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256009/ for more information.

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"Explaining Brazil's Persistent Police Violence Under Democracy"

RONALD AHNEN, Assistant Professor Politics, St. Mary's College of California

Dr. Ronald E. Ahnen has been Assistant Professor of Politics at St. Mary’s College of California in Moraga, CA since 2003.  He has been researching human rights, police violence and public safety policy in Brazil and Latin America for over a decade.  His book manuscript “Democracy vs. Rights:  The Politics of Police Violence and Public Safety Policy in Brazil” is currently under review. Recently he has begun a new line of research on Micro-credit programs aimed at poverty reduction and social integration.  His publications have appeared in the International Journal of Children’s Rights, the Bulletin of Latin American Research, and Latin American Politics and Society.

Bolívar House Film Series

Sinking Magic (1998)

A documentary that looks at the social and economic conditions that exist today in Mexico City.

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"The Beginning and End of Castro's Cuba"

ANTHONY DEPALMA, Staff Reporter for the New York Times

Anthony DePalma was the first foreign correspondent of The New York Times to serve as bureau chief in both Mexico and Canada. Starting in 1993, he covered some of the most tumultuous events in modern Mexican history, including the Zapatista uprising, the assassination of the ruling party's presidential candidate and the peso crisis that quickly spread economic chaos to markets all over the world. Mr. DePalma has also reported from Cuba, Guatemala, Suriname, Guyana, and during the Kosovo crisis, Montenegro and Albania. His book, Here: A Biography of the New American Continent, was published in the United States and Canada in 2001. From 2000 to 2002, Mr. DePalma was an international business correspondent covering North and South America, and he wrote over 85 of the Portraits of Grief that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2002. During his tenure with The Times, he has held positions in the Metropolitan and National sections of the newspaper. In 2003 he was awarded a fellowship at Notre Dame's Institute for International Studies where he wrote "Myths of the Enemy" about Cuba's Fidel Castro. After returning to The Times he became part of the team of correspondents and editors that produced the Class Matters series and book (Times Books 2005). He now covers the environment for The Times.

A special talk ponsored by the CLAS working group "Education and Policy in Latin America"

“Education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of people to address environment and development issues…”

Come to a cross-disciplinary talk with leaders from the organization SACRO, an innovative environmental education organization in Costa Rica, and other experts from Latin America and SUSE

• Ileana Jiménez de Terán, President of SACRO
• Ricardo C. Lankester, Vice-President of SACRO
• Alejandro Toledo, Former President of Perú & Stanford graduate
• Eliane Karp de Toledo, Former First Lady of Perú & Stanford graduate
• Martin Carnoy, Professor of Education, Stanford University

Lunch Provided

This event will be followed by an informal discussion with Terán and Lankester in Bolívar House, beginning at 5:30 PM.

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED. LYRIS WEIDEMANN WILL GIVE ANOTHER LECTURE NEXT QUARTER.

Bolívar House Lecture Series

LYRIS WIEDEMANN, Director of the Portuguese Language Program and Senior Lecturer in Portuguese

Lyris Wiedemann earned her Ph.D. in Education at Stanford University in 1982. She is interested in language and culture, sociolinguistic variation, and language acquisition. She teaches courses on the Portuguese language, including a course aimed at speakers of Spanish. Since Dr. Wiedemann's arrival at Stanford, the Portuguese Program has more than tripled its number of enrollments, and expanded to include Portuguese for Special Purposes, such as the classes offered at the Graduate School of Business. Dr. Wiedemann is highly active in professional organizations at the national and international level. She is currently working on a number of publications, including a Portuguese Grammar for speakers of Portuguese as a second language.

Bolívar House Film Series

April 9, 1948

A documentary on the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in Colombia and the bloody aftermath. (60 min).

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"Criminality and Property Rights: Cattle Rustling in Chihuahua During the Porfiriato"

MARIA APARECIDA DE S. LOPES, Visiting Scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies

Maria Aparecida de S. Lopes is professor of “History the Americas” at Universidade Estadual Paulista, since 2001.  She graduated (BA) from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, (SP, Brazil, 1993), and obtained her PhD degree from El Colegio de México (Mexico City, 1999).  The results of her PhD dissertation have been published by El Colegio de México and El Colegio de Michoacán in 2005 under the title De costumbres y leyes. Abigeato y derechos de propiedad en Chihuahua durante el porfiriato.  In 2001 she spent one semester at the University of California in San Diego as a Research Fellow in the Center for US-Mexican Studies, where she started her present research that deals with livestock trade relations between the United States and Mexico in the nineteenth century.  Apart from researching in Northern Mexico – most of her findings has been published in several journals in Brazil and Mexico – she has also done work comparing the Brazilian and the Mexican independence movements; on the creation and evolution of urban centers in South America, during the Colonial period, and on the Brazilian land laws in the nineteenth century.  Her most recent paper is entitled “Del taller a la fábrica: vida cotidiana de los trabajadores chihuahuenses en la primera mitad del siglo xx”.  This piece is the product of a seminar organized by professors Pilar Gonzalbo (El Colegio de Mexico) and Aurelio de los Reyes (UNAM), between 2000 and 2001, which result in the publication of Historia de la vida cotidiana en México,in five volumes, by El Colegio de México & Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"Intiruna: Indigenous Peoples and Ecotourism Certification"

WILLIAM DURHAM, Professor, Department of Anthropological Studies; Co-Director, Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development

GERALDINE SLEAN, Coordinator, Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development

Professor William Durham received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1977. His research interests center on Central and South America, and include biological, ecological, and evolutionary anthropology with emphases on conservation and community development, resource management, cultural evolution, and environmental issues.

Geraldine Slean completed an MA degree in Latin American Studies at the University of Florida in 2005. Her MA thesis and fieldwork focused on residents' perceptions of sustainable touirism in Túcume, Peru. She holds a BA in Anthropology from Harvard University.

Bolívar House Film Series

800 Balas (800 Bullets ) - Spain, 2002

This anarchic comedy from Spain's reigning master of cinematic mayhem centers on a 12-year old boy who sneaks off to find the Spanish setting of a number of Hollywood westerns in hopes of finding his grandfather, a former stuntman, who he's just learned is still alive and performing at the run-down theme park.

Please visit http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292886/ for more information.

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"Ecuador's Indigenous Rights Movement and Non-Violence."

LYNN MEISCH, Professor of Anthropology, St. Mary's College of California

Lynn A. Meisch has a long-standing love of Andean art and culture. She earned a M.A. in Humanities from San Francisco State, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Stanford University . Since 1973, she has conducted field research in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia and lectured and published widely on Andean textiles, and given the Docents' Training Lectures on Pre-Columbian Art at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. Prof. Meisch is also a handspinner, dyer, weaver and beadworker and loves learning new techniques during her fieldwork.

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"Globalization: Struggles to Maintain Cultural Identity In and Around Cuernavaca, Mexico"

JUDY SHEVELEV , Administrative Director & Adjunct Professor, Center for Global Education

After the talk, Judy Shevelev will be available to talk with students interested in studying in Mexico, Central America, or Namibia for a semester with the Center for Global Education. For more information, please visit the center's website.

Judy earned her M.A. in International Affairs with a specialization in Latin American Studies from Columbia University and received her B.A. in International Relations with a minor in Spanish at the University of California at Davis.  Prior to joining CGE in 1991, Judy worked in Nicaragua as a liaison for the Network of Educators on Central America (NECA) and as a grants consultant for a Salvadoran refugee cooperative, where she focused on human rights issues.  She has also worked and conducted research in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and El Salvador.

Bolívar House Film Series

There will be no film this week.

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"Microhistory from Below: The Social and Cultural Landscapes of Slaving and Resistance to Slaving in Angola, 17th-19th Centuries."

ROQUINALDO FERREIRA, Assistant Professor of Histroy, University of Virginia

Roquinaldo Ferreira is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He received a Ph.D. in African History from UCLA in 2003. He has held fellowships at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American research (Harvard University), the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (Harvard University), and Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (Yale University). His book (Angola and Brazil in the Atlantic World: Trade and the Social and Cultural Landscapes of Slaving, 1680-1830) is forthcoming through Cambridge University Press.

Special Talk

"The Political and Autobiographical in Film"

ANDRES DI TELLA, Filmmaker

Andrs Di Tella, one of the most exciting young film artists working in Latin America today, directed Montoneros, una historia (1995), Prohibido (1997), and La television y yo (2002). He was also responsible for the artistic direction of the collective project Historias de Argentina en Vivo (2001). He was the founding director of the International Independent Film Festival of Buenos Aires. In 1996, he was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship and has held a visiting professorship at Princeton University. He has served as director of Princetons annual documentary film festival for the past four years. His current project is entitled Fotografias (2007).  He is the author of ANDRES DI TELLA: CINE DOCUMENTAL Y ARCHIVO PERSONAL.

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"Frontier, Regional Economy, and Wealth Growth in 19th-Century Brazil: Araraquara, Sao Paulo."

DORA PAIVA DA COSTA , Visiting Scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies

Dora Isabel Paiva da Costa is a professor in the Department of Economics of the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She received her M.A. from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas – UNICAMP in Campinas and her Ph.D. from Universidade Federal Fluminense in Rio de Janiero. She has written many articles looking at the history of Brazil in the 1700 and 1800s. Her main interests are frontier history, family history, population and demographic history, and also social and economic history.

Special Talk

JULIETA LEÓN, Venezuelan Poet

Julieta León (Caracas, Venezuela, 1949) is the latest winner of the Poetry Prize of the XV Literary Biennial José Antonio Ramos Sucre, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Venezuela and all of Latin America.  Her recent publications include Arena del desierto (1999), Eterna sed (2005), and Mall (2006).  Join us for a public reading of poems followed by a conversation with the artist.  In Spanish.

Special Talk

"Oaxaca Fights Back: The Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca"

LAURA CARLSEN, Director of the Americas Program, International Relations Center, Mexico City  

Laura Carlsen is a foreign policy writer and analyst based in Mexico  City, where she directs the Americas Program of the International Relations Center (IRC) www.americaspolicy.org. Originally from the United States and a graduate of the Stanford Latin America Studies program, she has been a journalist and activist in Mexico City for two decades. She is the author of numerous articles and co-editor of "Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico."

Bolívar House Lecture Series

"Between Moderation and Defiance: The Kirchner Government in Comparative Perspective"

SEBASTIAN ETCHEMENDY, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Stanford University

Sebastian Etchemendy is assistant professor at Torcuato Di Tella University in Argentina. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Berkeley in 2004 and has published in the following journals: Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies and Latin American Politics and Society.