Autumn Quarter 2005-06 News
New Master of Arts Program in Latin American Studies
The Center for Latin American Studies is pleased to announce that the degree granting authority for the MA in Latin American Studies was unanimously approved in the Faculty Senate yesterday. The center is currently accepting applications for fall 2006. The application deadline is January 10, 2006.
2005-06 Latin American Politics Lecture Series
The center has expanded its support to faculty in the form of a faculty-led conference program in 2005-06. Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, professor of political science, is developing a Latin American Politics lecture series that will bring to the center six young scholars who have produced some of the most engaging work in the field of Latin American studies during the last few years. Chappell Lawson, associate professor of political science at MIT, gave the first talk in this series on October 11. In his talk, Lawson introduced the Mexican 2006 Panel Study, a multi-method approach in the field of survey research that merges aggregate data and survey data to determine what influences (e.g., television advertisements) change people’s minds during an electoral campaign and why.
Kent Eaton, associate professor in the Department of National Security at the Naval Postgraduate School, will speak on "Armed Clientelism: How Decentralization Complicated Colombia's Civil War," in the next talk on November 15.
Other conferences planned for 2005-06 are a symposium on Portuguese for Spanish speakers led by Senior Lecturer Lyris Wiedemann, a research collaboration to conduct geophysical surveys at archaeological sites in Mexico with geophysics Professor Amos Nur, and a symposium on tropical dry forests of Latin America led by biological sciences Professors Rodolfo Dirzo and Hal Mooney.
Literary Reading by Novelist Margo Glantz
Margo Glantz read from two of her novels at the Bolivar
House Wednesday noon lecture.
Glantz, a CLAS Tinker Visiting Professor, read from her novel El rastro, winner of the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz prize in 2003. El rastro tells the story of Nora Garcia's return to her hometown, a small village in Mexico, for the funeral wake of her ex-husband. At the wake, Nora realizes she's still in love with her dead ex-husband and is filled with regret and the pain of lost love. Spanish professor Gordon Brotherston, who nominated Glantz for the Tinker professorship, compared El rastro to the film 21 Grams by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu. Brotherston said both works look at what's left when someone dies. Glantz describes El rastro as a story about death and music, pain and loss, and the funeral as a social obligation.
Glantz also read from her novel Historia de una mujer que caminó por la vida con zapatos de diseñador. Again, the character Nora Garcia appears, this time as a woman who is obsessed with designer shoes. Historia is a fun look at the role of fashion in society.
El rastro and Historia are the first two novels in a trilogy. Glantz plans to work on the third while a Tinker visiting professor at the center this fall and spring quarter. Nora Garcia will appear in this novel in three incarnations, or as Glantz puts it, "una Nora Garcia con clones" (a Nora Garcia with clones).
Glantz says she writes about the trivial, everyday common things in life to show their importance and to tell the story and history of culture.
Curbstone Press published The Wake, the English version of El rastro, in September 2005. Copies are available in Stanford Bookstore.