Events

Latin American Studies at the University of Toronto
Lecture Series

WINTER 2010

Wednesday, January 13, 12-2 pm, Room 108N

Luisa Farah Schwartzman

Unexpected narratives from Multicultural Policies: Translations of Affirmative Action in Brazil

Luisa Farah Schwartzman is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She did her PhD in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MA in Latin American Studies at Stanford University. Schwartzman’s current work focuses on racial classification, social inequality, and affirmative action in contemporary Brazil.

A light lunch will be served.

Wednesday, January 13, 4-6 pm, Room 108N Munk Centre

Frank Guridy

“Un Dios, Un Fin, Un Destino”: Garveyism as a Trancultural Movement

Co-sponsored by: New College Caribbean Studies, Latin American Studies, and the Cuba Working Group, University of Toronto; LAPS History Department, Glendon College Office of the Principal, York University.

Frank Guridy is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has a PhD in History from the University of Michigan. Guridy has published essays in Radical History Review, Caribbean Studies, and Social Text. His most recent essay, “‘War on the Negro’: Race and the Revolution of 1933,” was published in Cuban Studies. His forthcoming book, "Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African-Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow," (University of North Carolina Press, Spring 2010), examines the institutional relationships and cultural interactions between Cubans and Americans of African descent, from the U.S. intervention of 1898 until the eve of the outbreak of the Cuban Revolution.

Thursday, January 14, 6-8 pm, New College William Doo Auditorium

Book Launch

Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class, and State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959, by Gillian McGillivray (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009)

Co-sponsored by: Caribbean Studies, Latin American Studies, and the Cuba Working Group, University of Toronto; LAPS History Department, Glendon College Office of the Principal, York University Bookstore, York University.

Dr. Gillian McGillivray is an Assistant Professor of History at Glendon College, York University, Toronto. She received her PhD in History and MA in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University. Dr. McGillivray has done research on women and revolution in 1980s Nicaragua, and on sugar workers, cane farmers, revolution, and populism in 20th-century Cuba and Mexico. She is currently drafting an article on the Mexican sugar community of Los Mochis, Sinaloa (1900-1940), and has begun a new book-length project entitled "Sugar and Power in the Brazilian Countryside, 1889-1964."

If you would like to join us for the Cuban history book launch please RSVP by January 3rd to:
http://www.mypunchbowl.com/parties/719695-book-launch-at-ut-new-college-with-salsa-son-and-snacks

Wednesday, January 20, 12-2 pm, Room 108N

Susan Antebi

Disability and the Circulation of Objects: Readings in Contemporary Mexican Cultural Production

Co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Toronto

Susan Antebi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD from Harvard University, and taught for several years at the University of California, Riverside. Her research focuses on contemporary Latin American cultural production, with emphasis on Mexico. Her book, "Carnal Inscriptions: Spanish American Narratives of Corporeal Difference and Disability," published by Palgrave-Macmillan in 2009, in the “New Concepts in Latinoamerican Cultures” series. Antebi is currently at work on a new research project examining theories of eugenics and disability in the context of 20th-century Mexico.

A light lunch will be served.

Thursday, Feb 4, 2-4 pm, Room 208N

Roy Maddock

Alternative Dispute Resolution in Chicago Spanish-Speaking Communities (Workshop)

Co-sponsored by the Trudeau Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies and Latin American Studies.

Roy Maddock leads trainings on alternative dispute resolution, and works as a bilingual mediator (English and Spanish) for the Center for Conflict Resolution in Chicago. Topics covered in his workshops and trainings include restorative justice, peer mediation in schools, consensus building, and conflict management. Maddock is the current Board of Directors Secretary for the Association for Conflict Resolution, Chicago Chapter.

Friday, February 12, 2-4 pm, Room 208N

Jacqueline Holler

The Expression of Profound Emotion: Sadness and Joy in the Emotional Communities of Colonial Mexico

Jacqueline Holler is Associate Professor of History/Women’s Studies, Chair of the History Program, and Coordinator of Women’s and Gender Studies Programs at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, British Columbia. She is the author of "Escogidas Plantas: Nuns and Beatas in Mexico City, 1531-1601," (Columbia, 2005 [2003]), which won the American Historical Association’s Gutenberg-e Prize; co-author with Peter Bakewell, third edition of "History of Latin America," (Blackwell, 2009); co-author, with Michael Kimmel, of the forthcoming "Gendered Society: Canadian Edition," (Oxford, 2010); and author of articles and chapters on religion, gender, and culture in 16th century New Spain. Holler’s current projects include a study of women’s mental and physical health, sexuality, and embodiment in early colonial New Spain, and a book-length study of the Cortés conspiracy of 1566.

Wednesday, February 24, 12-2 pm, Room 208N

Julie Shean

Flagellum Jesuitarum: The Revival of Palafox’s Iconography in Eighteenth-Century New Spain

Julie Shean received her Ph.D. in the History of Art in 2007, from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her article discussing the history of images related to Fray Sebastián de Aparicio, entitled “’And a Branch shall grow out of his roots’: The Cultic Trajectories of Sebastián de Aparicio (1502-1600) in New Spain’s Eighteenth Century” was published in spring 2009, in the Colonial Latin American Review; another article about the controversial iconography of Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, will appear in a forthcoming "festschrift" in honour of Dr. Jonathan Brown. Shean currently works at the Frick Collection and Art Reference Library where she is the database administrator and lead developer of online art history resources, including the Montias Database of Art in 17th Century Dutch Inventories, the Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America, and the Dictionary of Spanish Artists from the 4th to the 20th Centuries.

A light lunch will be served.

Thursday, February 25 2010, 2-4 pm
History Department Seminar Room, Sid Smith Hall, Room 2098, 100 St. George Street

Caribbean Studies at the University of Toronto Presents:

Maximilian Forte

The Resurgence of the Caribs, and of Indigeneity, in Trinidad and Tobago

Maximilian Forte is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal. He is the author of Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs: (Post) Colonial Representations of Aboriginality in Trinidad and Tobago (University of Florida Press, 2005).

In which ways can one speak of a “resurgence” of indigeneity in Trinidad? What does it mean to be Carib in Trinidad today? Does acknowledging a Carib presence alter mainstream theories of the historical and cultural development of Caribbean societies? How have Trinidadian self-perceptions and self-representations been altered by acknowledging the Carib presence? If there is Carib resurgence, why does it matter?

For more information please contact 416-978-4054 or melanie.newton@utoronto.ca

Organized with the generous support of Aboriginal Studies, The Centre for the Study of the United States, Equity Studies, Latin American Studies and the Departments of English, History, Sociology, and Political Science.

Thursday, February 25, 4-6 pm, Room 108N

Gabi Rodriguez and Eshe Lewis

Negrito, De Donde Vienes? Black Identity in and Anti-Racism in Peru

The running time for the documentary film "Negro Soy" is 55min.

The legacy of slavery and has reached every corner of the Americas, and as diasporic racialized people, we went to Peru to have conversations about what racism and resistance looks like there, and how it relates to racism and resistance in Canada, our home. In a world where people tend to quantify some places as "more racist" or "less racist" than others, this film makes the resolute point that we must understand spaces as "differently" racist, but never "more" or "less" so than others. From Peru to Canada, and everywhere else for that matter, people are actively resisting racism in its many potent and diverse forms.

The conversations in this film explore the role of music in black identity, how "black" means many different things to many different people, and about the unique experience of blackness in Peru. Most importantly, however, it sheds light on the universality of localized liberatory struggles against racism, and reminds us of the need for nuanced understanding and adamant resistence to racism across borders.

There's also a Youtube address for the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NegroSoyDoc

Gabriela Rodriguez is a fourth year Latin American Studies and Sexual Diversity Studies student. She tries every day to find ways to work truly liberatory anti-racism into everything she does, including her research. Things that really interest her are informal and artistic acts of resistance to racism and neoliberalism. She hopes to find a way to teach radically, without selling out to the man.

Eshe Lewis is a recent graduate of the Latin American Studies Program. She is passionate about the Afro-American diaspora, and wants to work closely with these communities in the future. She is specifically interested in Afro-syncretic religion, black history, and dance. Lewis hopes to pursue graduate studies in Latin American Studies and Law, and to live somewhere where snow only exists in snow globes.

Rodriguez and Lewis are the recipients of the Latin American Studies Research Award in 2009.

Thursday, March 4, 4-6 pm, Room 108N

Frank Salomon

From the Farther Shores of Literacy: Andean Indigenous Media and the Question of What Writing Is

Co-sponsored by the Department of History, the Centre for Comparative Literature, the Department of Anthropology, and Latin American Studies.

Frank Salomon is the John V. Murra Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An ethnographic and historical researcher of highland Ecuador and Peru, he is the author of "The Cord Keepers" (2004), "Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Vols. 5 and 6" (1999), "The Huarochirí Manuscript, A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion" (1991), and "Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas" (1986). Salomon’s forthcoming book,"The Lettered Mountain" (2011), concerns the Andean people’s appropriation of the alphabet. He has been the recipient of numerous grants including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and is a past President of the American Society for Ethnohistory.

Saturday, March 6, 2010, 9:30-6:00 pm

Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George Street, main floor conference room

Creating Affinities: 1810 and 1910 in Latin American Culture symposium

Co-sponsored by the Centre for Comparative Literature, the Department of History, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Latin American Studies.

This one-day symposium marks the bicentennial of some Latin American independence movements, and the 100-year celebrations of the Mexican Revolution. The speakers will examine the crucial role that literary, artistic, political, and scientific associations played in 1810 and 1910. These associations or affinities—whether institutionalized, or more informal and affective—shaped the construction of discourse about cultural patrimony, imagined communities, and the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, which continue to inform Latin American ideologies. How do these pivotal moments in the history of Latin America shape the trajectory of the centuries, and how are they manifested in cultural artifacts and discourses?

Invited Speakers:

Patrick Dove (University of Indiana)
Graciela Montaldo (Columbia University)
Gustavo Verdesio (University of Michigan)
Erna von der Walde (Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia)
Juan Poblete (University of California Santa Cruz)
Alvaro Fernandez Bravo (CONICET / NYU in Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Paul Garner (University of Leeds, UK)

You must register for this event in order to attend. Registration closes on March 4th. A light lunch will be served.

Wednesday, March 10th, 4-6pm
Room 208N, Munk Centre

Colloquium:
Geographies of the Imaginary: Transnational Perspectives of the Urban World in the Literature of Junot Diaz

Co-Sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Department of English, the Centre for Comparative Literature, and Latin American Studies at the University of Toronto.

Guest Speakers:
Dr. Sharae Deckard
“Not Even a Sci-Fi Writer”: Junot Diaz, Generic Transmutation, and Peripheral Modernity
Dr. Sharae Deckard is Assistant Professor of World Literature at University College Dublin (Ireland). She is the author of Paradise Discourse, Imperialism, and Globalization: Exploiting Eden (Routledge, 2009).

Dr. Danny Méndez
A “How-T” Guide to Building a Boy: Dominican Diasporic Subjectivities in Junot Diaz's “Drown”
Dr. Danny Méndez is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Michigan State University. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled, In Zones of Contact (combat): Dominican Narratives of Migration and Displacements in the US and Puerto Rico.

Thursday, March 11, 4-6 pm
Northrop Frye building, Victoria University, Room NF119

Lisa Voigt

Performing Sovereignty and Alterity in Eighteenth Century Festival Accounts

Co-sponsored with the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Toronto

Lisa Voigt was Associate Professor at the University of Chicago before joining Ohio State University’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese in 2009. "Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic: Circulations of Knowledge and Authority in the Iberian and English Imperial Worlds," (University of North Carolina Press, for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2009), was written with support from an NEH Fellowship at the Newberry Library (2002-2003), and a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia (2005-2006). Her teaching and research on colonial Latin American literature and culture address transatlantic and comparative issues, and include such topics as captivity and shipwreck narratives in the Spanish and Portuguese empires, mestizo historiography in New Spain, and Baroque festivals and Creole identity in the Andes and Brazil. Voigt has published in: "Colonial Latin American Review," "Early American Literature," "Revis"Renaissance Quarterly," among other journals and collected volumes.

Thursday, March 18, 4:30 – 6:00 PM
108 N, Munk Centre

Book Launch Round Table
“Cuba in the World, the World in Cuba: Essays on Cuban History, Politics and Culture”

Speakers
Alessandra Lorini (University of Florence)

Ronald Pruessen (University of Toronto)

Michael Lima (University of Toronto)

Filomena Critelli (University of Buffalo- School of Social Work)

Candace Sobers (University of Toronto)

Description
The roundtable will provide an open forum where Editor Alessandra Lorini along with some of the contributors and participants can discuss from different perspectives selected themes of Cuba’s history, politics, society, international relations and the multifaceted interactions between events in the island and global trends throughout the twentieth century.

Ronald Pruessen
Introduction

Alessandra Lorini
“Revering and Contesting Machado in the Shadow of the Plata Amendment: Cuban Nationalism and Anti-Imperialism in the 1920s”

Michael Lima
“Reflections on the Cuban Student Movement: 1952-1961”

Filomena Critelli
“A Barrel of Oil for a Doctor: Resilient Cuba”

Candace Sobers
“Investigating Cuban Internationalism: The First Angolan Intervention, 1975”

Wine and cheese reception to follow 6:00 – 7:00 PM, in the second floor lounge, North House, Munk Centre.

Main Sponsor
Cuba Working Group sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute
Co-Sponsored by
Latin American Studies

Wednesday, March 24, 12-2 pm, Room 108N

Eduardo Kohn

The Imponderable Weight of the Dead: Life, Finitude, and Future in an Amazon Forest

Eduardo Kohn is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University, Montreal. His research focuses on how the Upper Amazonian Runa interact with the various beings that inhabit the forest. Ethnographically attending to such interactions challenges central assumptions about “the human” in the social sciences and humanities. This talk is part of a book –Anthropology Beyond the Human– that aims to develop a kind of anthropology that does not separate humans from the rest of the world in which we live.

A light lunch will be served.

Change in Date and Room:

Wednesday, March 31, 12-2 pm, Room 208N

Dalia Kandiyoti

Latinidad and Sefarad: Connecting the Americas in Recent Latina Novels

Co-sponsored by the Centre for the Study of the United States.

Dalia Kandiyoti teaches in the English Department of the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Her book, "Migrant Sites: America, Place, and Diaspora Literatures," was published in the fall, 2009. Kandiyoti's presentation bridges U.S. Latina/o Studies, Jewish Studies, and Latin American Studies through the prism of Sephardism. Kandiyoti examines recent narratives by U.S. Latina authors who have claimed crypto-Jewish/converso identities and have written novels and poetry about the imagined experiences of secret Jewish identities in Cuba, Mexico, and New Mexico. Her paper reflects on this unprecedented interest by progressive and innovative writers primarily identified as Latinas based in the U.S. in engaging Sephardic identity and experience. Kandiyoti considers the implications of these authors' creative assemblage of the Latina and Jewish worlds in the Americas in terms of "overlapping diasporas," secrecy and knowledge, and alternative mestizajes.

A light lunch will be served.

Friday, April 16th
Room 108N, Munk Centre

William Egginton

A Rigour of Angels: Borges and Everyday Fundamentalism

Co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Latin American Studies Program, and The Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto.

"The aim of this talk is to derive a theory of everyday fundamentalism—i.e., fundamentalism not limited to the religious variety—from a series of fictional texts by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The title comes from the postscript he wrote to his 1941 story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis tertius," which contains his most explicit articulation of the theory. The lecture will seek to explain the theory and its potential relevance to contemporary debates around atheism and fundamentalism."

Professor Egginton is the Chair of the Department of Germanic & Romance Languages and Literatures, The Johns Hopkins University. He teaches courses on Spanish and Latin American literature, literary theory, and the relation between literature and philosophy. His most recent book is "The Theater ofTruth: The Ideology of (Neo)Baroque Aesthetics," (Stanford, 2010). He is also the author of: "The Philosopher’s Desire," (Stanford, 2007); "A Wrinkle in History," (Davies Group, 2007); "Perversity and Ethics," (Stanford, 2006); and "How The World Became a Stage," (SUNY, 2003). Professor Egginton is co-editor of "The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy," (SUNY, 2004), and his next book, "An Uncertain Faith: Fundamentalism, Atheism, and Religious Moderation," will appear later this year with Columbia UP.

Monday, 19 April 2010, 10-12 & 2-4
Room 238, Department of Anthropology

Dr. Chris Krupa
Interdisciplinary Workshop: Changing Spatial Features of the State in Latin America

Dr. Krupa is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Emory, will be joining the faculty of anthropology in July on the Scarborough Campus.

This event was co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the Latin American Studies program.

Tuesday, April 20th, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Victoria College, Room VC206, 73 Queen's Park Crescent

Andrés Dimitriu

Plunder, Pollution, and New Enclosures

Co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Toronto.

"The physiognomy of a government can best be judged in its colonies, for there its characteristic traits usually appear larger and more distinct. When I wish to judge the spirit and vices of the government of Louis XIV,I must go to Canada. Its deformities are seen there as through a microscope."
--Alexis de Tocqueville

Andrés Dimitriu is full professor in the Department of Communication at the Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Argentina. He has taught graduate seminars in Brazil, Canada, and Germany. Professor Dimitriu has published numerous articles and books on political economy of communication, political ecology, and critical views on development. Moreover, Dimitriu worked at the National Institute of Rural Technology in Argentina (INTA), and as an independent journalist, an editor of several publications, and a filmmaker. He was Secretary of Communication of the Province of Rio Negro, Argentina (1983-1987), and headed a regional research centre in Bariloche, Patagonia, and was a founding member of the Canada-Comahue Center. Currently, Dimitriu is co-director of the indexed THEOMAI journal (http://revista-theomai.unq.edu.ar/), a member of the Rural Reflection Group Argentina (www.grr.org.ar), and of the People´s Assemblies Against Plunder and Contamination of the Patagonia Region, Argentina, and a board member of the Latin Union of Political Economy of Information, Communication, and Culture (ULEPICC) http://www.ulepicc.org/quienes_somos.html.

No registration is required for this talk.

Friday, April 23, 7:30 pm
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave.

Organization of Latin American Studies presents: 5th Annual Charity Concert
Sounds of Solidarity: Edicion Peru

Co-sponsored by Latin American Studies at the University of Toronto.

Saturday, April 24 2010, 7:00 pm-10:00 pm
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave.

LATIN AMERICAN STUDENT FILM FESTIVAL

On April 24, 2010, Project 39 (a Hispanic student film group at the University of Toronto) is sponsoring a Latin American Student Film Festival at the University of Toronto. This student film festival will feature four short Latin American and Caribbean themed films that were created and directed by Latin American students in the city of Toronto. The goal of this event is to promote Hispanic culture and art through film and to promote awareness of equity issues within the Latin American community and to the broader Toronto community. We also want to encourage youth to explore the possibility of pursuing educational opportunities in Latin American and Cinema Studies at the university level.

The event is sponsored by the following: the Latin American Studies Department of the University of Toronto, Organization of Latin American Students, Hart House, Barrio Nuevo, Muevelo Live and Hispanic Roots (Omni Television). Come out and support a great event, everyone is welcome.

Films being shown:

¿Oye, qué bolá? Cuban Voices on Sexual Diversity
David Fernández and Jerome Scully. Running Time: 30 mins. English and Spanish, 2009.

This documentary brings together a range of energetic and sincere voices discussing sexual diversity in 21st Century Cuba. The documentary includes candid interviews with: Mariela Castro - director of the National Centre for Sex Education (and daughter of President Raúl Castro),documentary filmmaker - Lizette Vila, psychologist- Mayra Rodriguez, and author -Tomás Fernández Robaina.

Negro Soy: Black Voices from the Peruvian Pacific
Eshe Lewis and Gabi Rodriguez. Running time: 55 minutes. Spanish and English subtitles. 2010

The conversations in this film explore the role of music in black identity, how "black" means many different things to many different people, and about the unique experience of blackness in Peru. Most importantly, however, it sheds light on the universality of localized liberatory struggles against racism, and reminds us of the need for nuanced understanding and adamant resistance to racism across borders.

Project 39: Our voices
Marcia Iglesias. Running time: 10 minutes. Mini doc. English. 2010.

This short documentary focuses on the student perspective on the 40 percent Latin American High school dropout rate in Toronto. Under two coordinated meetings, Latino students with differing backgrounds and experiences will discuss their educational experience and educational opportunities for the Latino youth. This film will explore the negative stereotypes that the Latino youth face.

Re-Accionario
Francesca De Luca. Running time: 25 minutes. Drama. Spanish and English Subtitles. 2009

An actively political life is not something that worries most young Chileans today… except for a few exceptions. Benjamin, a sheltered upper-class college student meets Emilio, a charismatic young rebel seeking to do justice his own way, and her partner Paloma. These three characters will partner up and see their own theories put to the test of harsh reality when they plot to punish the man who tortured Paloma’s father during the dictatorship.

Thursday, May 6th
3:00 - 5:30 pm
Room 108 North - Munk Centre

The Cuba Working Group and Latin American Studies at University of Toronto
are pleased to present:

Cuba Graduate Workshop
A Multidisciplinary Workshop on Cuba where doctoral students will present their research in progress from different approaches.

Discussants
Prof. Ron Pruessen, Department of History, University of Toronto
Prof. Michael O’Sullivan, Faculty of Education, Brock University

“Moving from Friction to Cooperation: Canadian American Relations and Revolutionary Cuba, 1959-1966”
John Dirk, Department of History, University of Toronto

“From Benign Racialism to Politicized Racialism: Race and Racialization in Cuban Policies against Racism”
Alejandro Campos Díaz, Department of Sociology, York University

“The Production of Racial Logic in Cuban Education: An Anti-Colonial Approach”
Arlo Kempf, Equity Studies in Education, OISE at University of Toronto

“Modern Times? Chaplin in Post-Revolutionary Cuba”
Nicholas Balaisis, Communication and Culture, York University

Refreshments provided.

Co-sponsored by Latin American Studies at the University of Toronto.
The Cuba Working Group is sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Friday, May 28th, 2:00 - 4:00 pm
Room 108N, North House
Munk School of Global Affairs

Cuba Working Group and Latin American Studies present:

Francisco García González

“Lisanka: Re-thinking the Missile Crisis from
the Cuban Perspective”

Francisco García González is a Cuban script writer and has published numerous short stories that include: "Juegos Permitidos," "Color Local," "La Cosa Humana," and "Todos los cuentos de amor entre otros." As a script writer he has also worked with director Gerardo Chijona in the film, Boleto al Paraiso.

In his talk, Francisco will show excerpts from the film Lisanka, and will share his experience as a script writer working with director Daniel Diaz. Lisanka is a fictional story that takes place in a small Cuban town adjoining a Soviet military base in the early 1960s, as three men (two Cubans and one Soviet soldier) fight for the love of a young, female tractor driver. When the Missile Crisis breaks out, this town and its inhabitants become the centre of the world. Francisco will also examine the relationship between literature and history in his works with emphasis in two of his books: Leve Historia de Cuba/Brief History of Cuba, and Kilometro 36.

Refreshments will be provided

The Cuba Working Group is sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto

To register for an event, please go to the Munk School of Global Affairs website, “Events” section:
http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/Events.aspx.
For additional information, please contact: Eva-Lynn Jagoe, Director, las.director@utoronto.ca, or Stella Kyriakakis, Administrator, at: las.admin@utoronto.ca.

The Munk Centre for International Studies is a wheelchair accessible building. Metered street parking is available on Devonshire Place, outside of the Munk Centre.

FALL 2009

James Cullingham (York University)

What He Learned at the Revolution: Jacques Soustelle, indigenismo and L’Algérie Française

September 23, 12-2 pm
Room 108N

James Cullingham is a PhD candidate in History at York University, Toronto. He is also the Coordinator-Professor of Journalism-Broadcast at the School of Communication Arts, Seneca@York. As a documentary filmmaker and journalist, Cullingham is President of Tamarack Productions.

Jacques Soustelle was a French ethnographer of Mexico. He was also the last Governor General of Algeria. In that post, Soustelle was embroiled in the bloodiest conflict of French decolonization. It also afforded Soustelle an opportunity to use Algeria as a laboratory for the lessons he had learned as a witness to the Mexican Revolution. Until his death in 1990, Soustelle argued that his Mexican inspired reforms could have prevented bloodshed and terror in North Africa. Where does this brilliant, but contrary figure sit in the traditions of French imperialism? This paper examines Soustelle's injection of the dogma of indigenismo into French colonial policy.

Please remember to pre-register for this event, as a light lunch will be served, at: http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca

Emily McGuire

Becoming Cuban in Montmartre: Blackness as Primitivism in Alejo Carpentier and Lydia Cabrera

October 13, 5-7 pm
Room 205, Northrop Frye building, Victoria College

Co-sponsored with Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Emily Maguire is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on early ethnography and Caribbean literature. She has also translated the work of Cuban Sonia Rivera-Valdés, Puerto Rican Angel Lozada, and Chilean Javier Bello.

Allison Squires

Navigating the Middle: The Evolving Histories of Mexican Nurses

October 14, 12 noon – 2 pm
Room 108 North House, Munk Centre

Allison Squires is Assistant Professor at the College of Nursing, New York University. Her research interests centre on the global policy challenges of nursing human resources development in low and middle resource settings, particularly in Latin America. Her dissertation research, completed at Yale University, focused on the professionalization of Mexican nursing during the late twentieth century. Professor Squires’ presentation draws from the career experiences of the nurses who participated in the study, along with the extensive document analysis conducted as part of the research.

This talk is part of the Latin American Studies Luncheon Series. Please remember to register for this event, as a light lunch will be served.

William E. French

Letters, Bodies, and Crimes: Love Letters and the Anatomy of Sentiment in Northern Mexico, 1876-1929

October 22, 4-6 pm
Room 108 North House, Munk Centre

William E. French is Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. He is the past director of the Latin American Studies Programme at that institution. Professor French is the author of: A Peaceful and Working People: Manners, Morals, and Class Formation in Northern Mexico (1996); and coeditor of Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico (1994), and Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence (2007). He has published articles in the Hispanic American Historical Review and the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and has contributed to the Oxford History of Mexico. He is currently completing a book on love letters, diaries, and courtship in nineteenth and twentieth century Mexico.

Tomás Aquilino López Sánchez

Origins And Early Development Of Modern Cuban Painting: La Vanguardia

Co-sponsored with the Red Tree Artists’ Collective

October 28, 4-6 pm
Room 108 North House, Munk Centre

Tomás Aquilino López Sánchez was born in Havana, Cuba, where he studied at Wilfredo Lam Centre of Contemporary Art and at the Havana Centre for Conservation, Restoration, and Museology. Since 1997, he has been Curator and Conservator at Galería Guayasamîn in Havana, curating over 100 Cuban and international exhibitions. He was a visiting lecturer at the National University of Ireland in Dublin, the National College of Art and Design (Ireland), and University of Ulster Art College, Belfast. López is also a poet and short story writer, winning a number of awards, including the Luisa Perez de Zambrano National Poetry Award.

Edward Swenson

Urban Ideologies in the Ancient Andes

November 19, 4-6 pm
Room 108 North House, Munk Centre

Edward R. Swenson holds a BA (1995) from Cornell University, an MA (1998) from the University of Chicago, and a PhD (2004) from the University of Chicago. He is also currently a Research Associate at the Field Museum of Chicago. Professor Swenson has conducted archaeological research since 1997 in the Jequetepeque Valley on the North Coast of Peru, where he completed his University of Chicago dissertation project on the Moche and Chimu civilizations. He has also undertaken archaeological and ethnographic field work in Honduras, Italy, Thailand, and Cambodia. In early 2006, Swenson assisted in the direction of excavations at a temple hospital complex in Angkor, Cambodia. In the next three years, he will also co-direct a survey and excavation project at the prehistoric urban complex of Cañoncillo in Northern Peru. Swenson’s theoretical interests include the pre-industrial city, the emergence of social inequality, the archaeology of ritual and ideology, the phenomenology of monumental architecture, and the politics of spatial experience and social memory. He has published numerous technical reports on his research, as well as articles in books and academic journals.

James Dunkerley

Scenes of Sensibility in the Scientific Life of Alexander von Humboldt

November 23, 12 noon-2 pm
Room 108 North House, Munk Centre

James Dunkerley is currently the Andres Bello Chair in Latin American Culture and Civilization at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, New York University. A Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London, and formerly Director of the University's Institute for the Study of the Americas, Dunkerley has written on the history and politics of the Andes, Central America, and the Atlantic world, including: Bolivia: Revolution and the Power of History in the Present (2007); Americana: The Americas in the World, Around 1850 (2000); Political Suicide in Latin America (2000); and, Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central America (1988).

A light lunch will be served.

For further information please contact Stella Kyriakakis at: las.admin@utoronto.ca.
To register for events, please visit the Munk School of Global Affairs website at: http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/Events.aspx.