Latin American Studies at the University of Oregon http://las.uoregon.edu Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:47:02 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3 Brazil: Culture, Race, and Politics http://las.uoregon.edu/brazil-culture-race-and-politics/ http://las.uoregon.edu/brazil-culture-race-and-politics/#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:44:08 +0000 bcagno http://las.uoregon.edu/?p=616 Continue reading →]]> Latin American Studies Spring Speaker Series:

May 2013 Upcoming Events

Brazil: Culture, Race, and Politics

Schedule of Events

Monday, May 6: “Black Women Against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil”
Keisha-Khan Perry (Brown University)
3:30 p.m., Browsing Room, Knight Library

Thursday, May 9: “Democracy, Development, and the Puzzling Success of Brazil”
Peter Kingstone (King’s College London)
4:00 p.m., 112 Lillis

Thursday, May 16: “Speaking of Flowers: Commemorating 1968 Military Brazil”
Victoria Langland (UC Davis)
3:30 p.m., Browsing Room, Knight Library

Thursday, May 23: “Beyond the Punishment Paradigm: Mapping Africa and Brazil During Samba’s ‘Golden Age’  (1920s-1940s)”
Marc Hertzman (Columbia University)
3:30 p.m., 240C McKenzie

]]> http://las.uoregon.edu/brazil-culture-race-and-politics/feed/ 0 Trafalgar by Angelica Gorodischer, translated by Amalia Gladhart http://las.uoregon.edu/trafalgar-by-angelica-gorodischer-translated-by-amalia-gladhart/ http://las.uoregon.edu/trafalgar-by-angelica-gorodischer-translated-by-amalia-gladhart/#comments Wed, 06 Mar 2013 22:22:59 +0000 bcagno http://las.uoregon.edu/?p=611 Continue reading →]]> When you run into Trafalgar Medrano at the Burgundy or the Jockey Club and he tells you about his latest intergalactic sales trip, don’t try to rush. Trafalgar likes to sketch things out over six or seven coffees. No one knows whether he actually travels to the stars, but he’s the best storyteller around, so why not sit back, let Marcos bring you something refreshing and enjoy the story?

Amalia Gladhart is Professor of Spanish and Head of the Department of Romance Languages. She teaches courses on Latin American theater and literary translation. In addition to Trafalgar, by Angelica Gorodischer, she is the translator of two novels by Ecuadorian writer Alicia Yanez Cossio-Beyond the Islands and The Potbellied Virgin-and the author of Detours (Burnside Review Press)

]]> http://las.uoregon.edu/trafalgar-by-angelica-gorodischer-translated-by-amalia-gladhart/feed/ 0 Roundtable: The future of Latin American and Latino Studies in the US http://las.uoregon.edu/roundtable-the-future-of-latin-american-and-latino-studies-in-the-us/ http://las.uoregon.edu/roundtable-the-future-of-latin-american-and-latino-studies-in-the-us/#comments Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:57:30 +0000 bcagno http://las.uoregon.edu/?p=562 Continue reading →]]> The Latin American Studies Program and the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies cordially invite you to a public roundtable on “The Future of Latin American and Latino Studies in the US,” with the participation of prominent scholars in the field.

Friday, March 1st at 3:30 pm
Browsing Room, Knight Library

Our speakers will discuss the place of Latin American and Latino Studies within a rapidly changing US political, cultural, demographic, and linguistic scenario and a growing trend towards ”global studies” in academia.
The following scholars will be joining us:
Lorraine Bayard de Volo, Director, Latin American Studies Center, University of Colorado, Boulder
Rebecca Horn, Director, Latin American Studies Program, University of Utah
Rodolfo Dirzo, Director, Center for Latin American Studies, Stanford University
Kevin Terraciano, Director, Latin American Institute, University of California, Los Angeles
Adam Warren, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, University of Washington
This event has been sponsored by the Office of the Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs.
]]> http://las.uoregon.edu/roundtable-the-future-of-latin-american-and-latino-studies-in-the-us/feed/ 0 “Terrorizing Women: Feminicide and Gender Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” http://las.uoregon.edu/%e2%80%9cterrorizing-women-feminicide-and-gender-violence-at-the-u-s-mexico-borderlands%e2%80%9d/ http://las.uoregon.edu/%e2%80%9cterrorizing-women-feminicide-and-gender-violence-at-the-u-s-mexico-borderlands%e2%80%9d/#comments Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:47:28 +0000 bcagno http://las.uoregon.edu/?p=560 Continue reading →]]> Tuesday, February 28, 2012, 3:00-4:30 pm, Browsing Room, Knight Library
“Terrorizing Women: Feminicide and Gender Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands”
A lecture by Cynthia Bejarano (New Mexico State University)
This lecture is cosponsored by Center for the Study of Women in Society and the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012, 6:00 pm, 177 Lawrence Hall
Film Screening, “Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and the Search for Identity” (56′).
Presented by the  School of Journalism and Communication and The Latin American Studies Program

Thursday, March 1, 2012, 7:00 pm, Browsing Room, Knight Library
2012 Bartolomé de las Casas Lecture in Latin American Studies
“Fighting Impunity in National Courts: Human Rights and Transitional Justice in Latin America”
Almudena Bernabeu (Center for Justice & Accountability, San Francisco)

]]> http://las.uoregon.edu/%e2%80%9cterrorizing-women-feminicide-and-gender-violence-at-the-u-s-mexico-borderlands%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 Guatemala ex-dictator to stand trial on genocide http://las.uoregon.edu/guatemala-ex-dictator-to-stand-trial-on-genocide/ http://las.uoregon.edu/guatemala-ex-dictator-to-stand-trial-on-genocide/#comments Mon, 28 Jan 2013 21:51:33 +0000 bcagno http://las.uoregon.edu/?p=546 Continue reading →]]> by Sonia Perez-Diaz, Associated Press

January 28, 2013

GUATEMALA CITY — A former U.S.-backed dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala’s civil war will stand trial on charges he ordered the murder, torture and displacement of thousands of Mayan Indians, a judge ruled Monday.

Human rights advocates have said that the prosecution of Jose Efrain Rios Montt would be an important symbolic victory for the victims of one of the most horrific of the conflicts that devastated Central America during the last decades of the Cold War.

He is the first former president to be charged with genocide by a Latin American court.

Guatemala’s leaders have been criticized for years for their inability or unwillingness to prosecute government forces and allied paramilitaries accused of marching into Mayan villages, carrying out rapes and torture, and slaughtering women, children and unarmed men in a “scorched earth” campaign aimed at eliminating the support for a left-wing guerrilla movement.

Despite a series of international inquiries finding him responsible for war crimes, Rios Montt served as a Guatemalan congressman for 15 years until he lost a re-election race late last year. He had held immunity from prosecution while a member of Congress and was put under house arrest after losing his post.

One of the highest priorities of the president who won last year’s election, Otto Perez Molina, has been campaigning for the elimination of a U.S. ban on military aid to Guatemala, which is locked in a fight against heavily armed drug cartels that have taken over swathes of the country.

Among the conditions set by the U.S. Congress for restoring the aid is reforming Guatemala’s justice system and putting an end to impunity.

The decision to try Rios Montt could stand as a precedent in the cases of dozens of other lower-ranking military men accused of participating in atrocities, victims’ advocates have said.

Judge Miguel Angel Galvez ruled that Rios Montt could be tried on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for the killing of 1,771 indigenous Ixiles in 1982 and 1983, when he was president.

The decision clears the way for a three-judge panel to hear the evidence against Rios Montt and decide to either judge him guilty and sentence him, exonerate him of the charge or start a public trial.

Prosecutors allege that after leading a March 1982 coup and seizing control of the government, Rios Montt oversaw torture, rape, forced disappearances and forced relocations and killings of thousands of Ixil people by soldiers, paramilitaries and other government officials.

His lawyers have sought to block the trial, arguing that he is protected by an amnesty law.

The attorney-general’s office said that it found evidence of 5,271 killings of Ixil residents of the towns of San Juan Cotzal, Santa Maria Nebai and San Gaspar Chajul in the department of Quiche. Prosecutors said 1,771 died in some 15 massacres between 1982 and 1983, and 370 bodies have been identified.

Prosecutor Orlando Lopez said during hearings before Monday’s decision that Rios Montt wanted to wipe out the Ixil people, considered a bastion of support for guerrilla fighters waging a civil war against the Guatemalan state.

“During the period in which you held office, it is believed that the actions carried by members of the Guatemalan Army, military official and civil defense patrolmen resulted in the deaths of 1,771 people,” the complaint against Rios Montt reads.

The prosecution case includes forensic reports documenting hundreds of deaths.

Among the testimony presented to the judge was that of Ana Lopez, an Ixil woman taken from her home by soldiers in May, 1982 to a government outpost where she was tortured and raped for 10 days.

During the 1960-96 civil war, more than 200,000 people, mostly Mayan Indians, were killed or went missing and entire villages were exterminated, according to the United Nations.

]]> http://las.uoregon.edu/guatemala-ex-dictator-to-stand-trial-on-genocide/feed/ 0 LAS and CLLAS receive two-year grant from the Department of Education http://las.uoregon.edu/las-and-cllas-receive-two-year-grant-from-the-department-of-education/ http://las.uoregon.edu/las-and-cllas-receive-two-year-grant-from-the-department-of-education/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:24:07 +0000 bcagno http://las.uoregon.edu/?p=538 Continue reading →]]>

EUGENE, OR (Oct. 1, 2012)—The U.S. Department of Education has awarded an Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program (UISFL) grant to the University of Oregon’s Latin American Studies (LAS) program and the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies. The grant is part of a $1.5 million fund that was awarded to only 17 institutions across the country.

The $186,000 grant is for activities spread over two years which include development of new courses such as a study abroad seminar on “Human Rights in Guatemala,” a course on Brazil, and a post-study abroad seminar as well as enhancements for existing LAS and language courses.

The grant will also provide support to strengthen and regularize Portuguese instruction, funds to support student participation in the creation of an online dictionary for Zapotec  (one of the indigenous languages of Mexico with 500,000 speakers), a summer institute for middle and high school teachers on “Understanding the Many Faces of Latin America through Art and History,” and a number of lectures, film series and symposia that will connect the University of Oregon with the wider Eugene and Oregon communities.

Professors Carlos Aguirre and Lynn Stephen, along with several other faculty and staff, wrote the proposal for the UO. Aguirre and Stephen are the project co-directors.

“The award is a very important recognition of the quality of our faculty as well as the institutional support we receive from the University of Oregon,” said Stephen, director of the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS). Founded in 2009, CLLAS is testament to the growing presence of Latin American expertise on campus. It is a knowledge center linking research, teaching, and community engagement.

“The presence of Latin American Studies on campus has been growing steadily for the past 15 years. We are an important presence on campus,” said Aguirre, director of the Latin American Studies Program.  The program offers major and minor degrees and has more than doubled its faculty from 18 members to 42. Study abroad opportunities have also expanded.

Aguirre and Stephen view the new grant as an opportunity to further the UO’s internationalization agenda, to increase diversity on campus, and to consolidate the UO as a major center for the production and dissemination of knowledge about Latin America.

In the months to come, Aguirre and Stephen will work closely with different internal partners in the university to move their initiatives forward, including the College of Arts and Sciences; Wired Humanities Projects; Knight Library; the Office of the Vice President for Research, Innovation and Graduate Education; the Office of International Affairs; the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; and others.

The Office of International Affairs (OIA) provided seed funding for LAS’ grant development and will provide funding to support grant administration as part of its newly established Global Studies Institute.

Media Contacts

Chakris Kussalanant, Director of Marketing and Communications

UO Office of International Affairs

541-687-9393

Chakris@uoregon.edu

Eli Meyer, Assistant Director

UO Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies

emeyer@uoregon.edu

(541) 346-5714

Alice Evans, Research Dissemination Specialist

UO Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies

alicee@uoregon.edu

About Latin American Studies at the University of Oregon

The variety of peoples, cultures, languages, and environments makes the study of Latin America an exciting intellectual adventure. Students can earn a B.A. degree in Latin American Studies at the University of Oregon. A minor in LAS is also available. Our students receive a first-rate interdisciplinary training in Latin American Studies, with study abroad and internship opportunities and language instruction in Spanish and Portuguese. Core courses in Latin American Studies are complemented by courses drawn from departments and programs such as Romance Languages, History, Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, Philosophy, Geography, Journalism, International Studies, and Environmental Studies.

About the UO Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies

The Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS) puts the study of Latino/a and Latin American communities in conversation with one another and with the state of Oregon. CLLAS is a knowledge center dedicated to public access and excellence through the integration of teaching, research, community engagement and dissemination. CLLAS is an integral part of the University of Oregon’s strategy to recruit, retain, and build alumnae relations with a diverse and energized group of students, faculty, staff, parents, and families and to connect the university locally, national, and globally.

http://cllas.uoregon.edu/

Related Links

Latin American Studies at the University of Oregon

http://las.uoregon.edu/

Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies

http://cllas.uoregon.edu/

Oregon Latino Heritage Collaborative

http://olhc.uoregon.edu

Wired Humanities Projects

http://whp.uoregon.edu/

]]> http://las.uoregon.edu/las-and-cllas-receive-two-year-grant-from-the-department-of-education/feed/ 0 Pinceladas en el insomnio. An exhibit by Mexican artist Rolando Rojas http://las.uoregon.edu/pinceladas-en-el-insomnio-an-exhibit-by-mexican-artist-rolando-rojas/ http://las.uoregon.edu/pinceladas-en-el-insomnio-an-exhibit-by-mexican-artist-rolando-rojas/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:21:29 +0000 bcagno http://las.uoregon.edu/?p=533 Continue reading →]]> Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, November 16, 2012-January 13, 2013
Born in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico, Rolando Rojas is inspired by the legends, stories, and myths passed down from the ancestors of the people of Tehuantepec, who believed that they descended from mystical trees and animals. In this colorful oil paintings, he portrays this mythical world and interweaves it with his present and childhood experiences.
This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of the Consulate of Mexico, Portland, and the Latin American Studies Program.
]]> http://las.uoregon.edu/pinceladas-en-el-insomnio-an-exhibit-by-mexican-artist-rolando-rojas/feed/ 0 10.17.12 Women and the Search for Justice and Reconciliation in Guatemala http://las.uoregon.edu/10-17-12-women-and-the-search-for-justice-and-reconciliation-in-guatemala/ http://las.uoregon.edu/10-17-12-women-and-the-search-for-justice-and-reconciliation-in-guatemala/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:04:43 +0000 bcagno http://las.uoregon.edu/?p=527 Continue reading →]]> Women and the Search for Justice and Reconciliation in Guatemala

A talk by Gabriela Martínez

Wed. October 17, 2012, 12-1 pm, Knight Library Browsing Rm

Gabriela Martínez will discuss her work-in-progress about Guatemala, and the significance of the Historical Archives of the National Police of Guatemala (AHPN). She will address the work of remarkable women who are engaged in bringing to justice perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Several cases have been opened from the archives,
which revisit the internal war that engulfed Guatemala from 1960 to 1996, when a peace accord was signed.

Gabriela Martínez is the associate director of the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society and associate professor in the School of Journalism and Communication.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Women in Society

]]> http://las.uoregon.edu/10-17-12-women-and-the-search-for-justice-and-reconciliation-in-guatemala/feed/ 0 Michelle McKinley, Law School http://las.uoregon.edu/michelle-mckinley/ http://las.uoregon.edu/michelle-mckinley/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:33:39 +0000 bcagno http://las.uoregon.edu/?p=511 Continue reading →]]> Michelle McKinley is Associate Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Faculty Development, and Dean’s Distinguished Faculty Fellow. She teaches Law, Culture & Society, Immigration Law, Public International Law, and Refugee & Asylum Law. Professor McKinley attended Harvard Law School, where she was Executive Editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal and graduated cum laude in 1995. Professor McKinley also holds a Masters Degree in Social Anthropology from Oxford University. Professor McKinley is the former Managing Director of Cultural Survival, an advocacy and research organization dedicated to indigenous peoples. She is also the founder, and former director, of the Amazonian Peoples’ Resources Initiative, a community based reproductive rights organization in Peru, where she worked for nine years as an advocate for global health and human rights.

Professor McKinley has published extensively on international law, human rights, reproductive rights, and immigration issues, authoring numerous scholarly articles, essays, and works in progress. Her articles appear in the Law and History Review; NYU Journal of International Law and Politics; Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice; Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power; Yale Journal of Law and Humanities, and Unbound: Harvard Law Journal of the Legal Left among others. She has been awarded fellowships for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and the Newberry Library.

Professor McKinley has just been awarded a Law and Social Science Grant from the National Science Foundation for a project on “Legal Mobilization of Enslaved Litigants: Ecclesiastical versus Civil Lawsuits.” She is coordinating a symposium on “War and Memory: Bearing Witness to Loss in Everyday Life” (October 18-20, 2012). For more information, visit http://law.uoregon.edu/org/oril/symposium.html

]]> http://las.uoregon.edu/michelle-mckinley/feed/ 0 War and Memory: Bearing Witness to Loss in Everyday Life http://las.uoregon.edu/war-and-memory-bearing-witness-to-loss-in-everyday-life/ http://las.uoregon.edu/war-and-memory-bearing-witness-to-loss-in-everyday-life/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:39:21 +0000 bcagno http://las.uoregon.edu/?p=498 Continue reading →]]> http://law.uoregon.edu/org/oril/symposium.html

October 18-20, 2012

University of Oregon School of Law

Oregon Review of International Law presents a symposium

War and Memory: Bearing Witness to Loss in Everyday Life

Political violence, state terror, exceptionalism, and the traumatic effects of war are subjects of vibrant interdisciplinary debate. Social historians, anthropologists, scholars of humanitarian intervention, forced migration, international criminal law, literary critics, and documentary film-makers have long been concerned with describing and regulating the effects of torture, violence, and widespread human rights violations. Building on its past history in Nuremberg, the field of international criminal law has been reinvigorated by an increasing focus on accountability and punishment for the perpetrators of “crimes of hate/crimes of state.” In an associated vein, post-conflict states have privileged truth commissions as a vehicle for emerging democracies to redress past harms, claim reparations, and construct a lasting peace. However, other non-official forms of truth-telling and bearing witness are also important. The agenda setting stage of truth commissions represents a political opportunity for under-represented, oppressed, and discriminated sectors of a society to make their grievances heard. Sexual violations and gender-based violence have been paramount in the truth commission process, and currently occupy much of the terrain of international criminal law jurisprudence. But how do the survivors of mass atrocity make sense of their past? How do the perpetrators deal with reconciliation and reintegration? How do citizens and former combatants live with everyday forms of state and non-state brutality in post-conflict zones? How does the trend toward amnesty and reconciliation create, influence, and distort historical memory? What temporal illusion occurs when we neatly cordon off times of war from times of fragile peace? What are the prospects for future relationships infused with memories of violence and terror?

We seek to address these and other questions by bringing together a group of interdisciplinary scholars whose work sheds light on the intricate connection between war and memory in Africa and Latin America. These questions that animate this symposium on War and Memory build upon the Oregon Review of International Law’s previous gatherings that have provided a space for critical yet constructive voices in international law. Whereas War and Memory will interrogate “time with a retrospective lens,” previous symposia have investigated notions of space and scale and the confluence of Human Rights and the Environment. War and Memory carry on ORIL’s critical tradition evidenced in “Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL): Capitalism and the Common Good.”

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