Spring Quarter 2006-07 News
Differences within the Portuguese Language
On May 1, Bolívar House was privileged to welcome Dr. Lyris Wiedemann, who was an Associate Professor of Linguistics and Language Teaching at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul and the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul until 1983. In the United States, she has taught Portuguese for nearly a decade at the University of California-Berkeley, where she was the Assistant Director of Portuguese Lower Division Courses. She returned to Stanford as the Director of the Portuguese Language Program in 1996. Dr. Wiedemann's research interests include language and culture, sociolinguistic variation, bilingualism, and translation and language acquisition.
In her talk, Dr. Wiedermann began by highlighting that the United States considers Portuguese to be the second most important language, after Arabic. This emphasis is due to economic opportunities and political changes resulting from increased globalization. However, there are cultural, historical, geographic and linguistic (including phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical) differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese. During the colonial period, universities and newspapers were prohibited in Brazil, and colonists developed close ties to indigenous peoples and slaves. These factors help explain why Brazilian Portuguese diverged from European Portuguese and incorporated more diverse elements. Today, Brazil’s economic and cultural influence allows it to export music and movies abroad. Yet, division of language between both countries perpetuates the existence of cultural stereotypes.
Geopolitical Conflict Surrounding Paper Mills on the Uruguay River
On May 8, Bolívar House learned about Dr. Carlos Reboratti's research. Dr. Reboratti received his Ph.D. from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1973. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies. His main fields of interest include rural geography and environmental conflicts. Some of his most recently published books include La Quebrada (La Colmena, Buenos Aires, 2003) and Ambiente y Sociedad (Ariel, Buenos Aires, 2002). He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2004), Cantabrica (Spain, 2002), Berkeley (1999) and Tubingen (Germany, 1996).
In his talk, Dr. Reboratti examined the transnational conflict between Argentina and Uruguay surrounding pulp production. He highlighted the different actors in this dispute, including international economic groups, local and national governments, and environmental movements. When European-owned mills were constructed in Uruguay along the Uruguay River, a local Argentinean social movement (The Gulagueychu Environmental Assembly) protested. This dispute became so polarized as to bring in Mercosur and the International Court of Justice in The Hague for arbitration. This conflict is as yet unresolved but stresses marked differences in the perception of economic, environmental, and social costs and benefits between Uruguay and Argentina.
Lacan's Influence in Argentina
On May 14, Dr. Cecilia Taiana talked about her current research projects. Dr. Taiana was trained in psychology in Buenos Aires, Paris, London and Ottawa. She has co-edited The Reordering of Culture: Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada in the Hood and authored Confession and its Twin, Torture: Re-thinking the Therapeutic Alliance. She has more recently written a chapter, entitled "Transatlantic Migration of the Disciplines of the Mind: An Examination of the Reception of Wundt's and Freud's Theories in Argentina," and an article, "The Emergence of Freud's Theories in Argentina: Towards A Comparison with the US." Last winter, she also wrote a biographical note on Jacques Lacan for the editors of the Dictionary of Medical Biography published by Greenwood Publishers in 2006. She will continue her work on Jacques Lacan during her next sabbatical (2007-2008), when she plans to document the role of Lacanian study groups in Argentina during the period of the last dictatorship (1976-83).
In her talk, Dr. Taiana spoke about perceptions of Lacan in Argentina. During the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-83) there were as many as 50 study groups reading the texts of French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. They operated in the shadows, outside educational institutions and gave a place of refuge and safety to many intellectuals who did not leave Argentina during this period. This phenomenon appeared at a time shortly after the military coup-d'état, when the universities ceased to be places of intellectual freedom. Thus, an underground university of sorts began to develop in a social environment of increasing violence and censorship, an environment in which theocratic notions of "man" (including women and children), "fatherland" and the "purity" of a Western-Christian ancestry created an escalating hostility towards progressive, pluralistic and secular ideas.
The Political "Left" in Latin America
On May 16, Bolívar House held a heated discussion about the results of recent presidential elections in Latin America. Two-time Pulitzer-winning journalist, Tyler Bridges, moderated debates on definitions of the political "left" in Latin America as well as a discussion on political shifts that have occured in the last few decades.
Multiethnicity of Teotihuacan
On May 22, Bolívar House was privileged to hear from Dr. Linda Manzanilla, who is a researcher at the Institute of Anthropological Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Professor of Archaeology at UNAM. She received a PhD from the University of Paris (Sorbonne). She is the author and editor of 14 books and 112 articles and chapters on subjects related to the emergence and change of early urban societies in Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Andean Region. She has excavated in Mexico, Bolivia, Egypt, and Eastern Anatolia. She is a foreign member of both the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She is a member of El Colegio Nacional (Mexico). She was the co-editor of Latin American Antiquity with Gary Feinman.
In her talk, Dr. Manzanilla described the interdisciplinary methodology used in her projects at Teotihuacan, and the intellectual challenge that an anomalous multiethnic metropolis poses, when no written texts are available. Archaeologists work on repeated patterns of behavior that leave material traces: repeated arrays of instruments, raw materials, and debris in particular dispositions and locations; chemical residues on floors; microscopic pollen and phytoliths; botanical and faunal macrofossils; osteological and genetical data; isotopic concentrations in bones. The many faces that Manzanilla sees at Teotihuacan were exposed: an orderly settlement (the urban grid), the corporate organization (multifamily apartment compounds and the possibility of co-rulership), the multiethnic Babel, the crafts center, the multicolored city, the place of sacrifice and processing of human bodies, the capital of a weak state with no real territorial frontiers, the site that amassed sumptuary raw materials and goods.
Lemebel Visits Stanford
On May 22, Latin American Studies hosted author, Pedro Lemebel. Jean Franco, Francine Masiello and Juan Poblete first engaged in a discussion of Lemebel's works. Masiello elaborated on Lemebel's unique "voice" and poetic style, while Poblete focused on Lemebel's chronicles and their similarities to Mexican graffiti "artists".
Following the panel discussion, Lemebel read excerpts from his writings:
"Manifiesto (Hablo por mi diferencia)"
"Eres mío, niña"
"Ronald Wood (A ese bello lirio despeinado)"
Spring Fiesta
Latin American Studies' Annual Spring Fiesta was held on May 24. Students, faculty, and alumni crowded onto Bolivar House's lawn to hear band, Receita de Samba, play and see Stanford Capoeira perform.
Revolution of 1880 in Buenos Aires
On May 29, Tinker Visiting Professor, Dr. Hilda Sabato, spoke about her current research. Dr. Sabato is a history professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina. She is primarily concerned with political history, emphasizing nation-building, the development of republican institutional frameworks, and the shaping of citizenship in Latin America. Her current research project looks at political violence in 19th-century Argentina. Her books include, among others, Agrarian Capitalism and the World Market: Buenos Aires in the Pastoral Age, 1850-1890 (Albuquerque, 1989); and The Many and the Few: Political Participation in Republican Buenos Aires (Stanford, 2001). She was also the editor for Ciudadanía Política y Formación de Naciones: Perspectivas Históricas de América Latina (Mexico, 1999).
During the nineteenth century, violence was a constant feature in the Latin American political landscape. Argentina was no exception. In the decades that followed the passing of the national constitution, in 1853, hundreds of revolutions and rebellions of various sorts took place throughout its territory. In her talk, Dr. Sabato specifically examined the revolution of 1880 in Buenos Aires. Dr. Sabato posited that differences in values, duties, and virtues led to lines being drawn between distinct groups. However, she also (and more importantly)looked at representations of violence and suggested that violence was conceived of a an accepted political device of that time.