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June 19, 2019

Carlos Aguirre Receives the Fund for Faculty Excellence Award

Fifteen UO faculty members have been selected for the prestigious Fund for Faculty Excellence awards — One of whom is LAS Faculty, Carlos Aguirre!

The Fund for Faculty Excellence was established in 2006 with the generous support of Lorry I. Lokey and increases the university’s ability to highlight and encourage world-class research and teaching. Since 2006, more than 160 faculty members have received the awards, recognizing their excellence in creative accomplishment, education, research and scholarships.

“I am thrilled to celebrate our excellent faculty,” said Provost and Senior Vice President Jayanth Banavar. “Their scholarly and research efforts have great impact, and they inspire our students and all of us.”

Candidates are nominated by deans, with suggestions from faculty members and unit heads, and nominations are reviewed by the Fund for Faculty Excellence awards committee before a final determination is made by the provost. The award will provide this year’s recipients with a salary supplement of $20,000, distributed over the next academic year or $26,600 to be used for research support.

Recipients of the Fund for Faculty Excellence awards for 2019-20 are:

Carlos Aguirre, professor, history
Wonhee Arndt, associate professor, product design
Sonja Boos, associate professor, German and Scandinavian
Erik Girvan, associate professor, law
Volya Kapatsinski, associate professor, linguistics
Brice Kuhl, associate professor, psychology
Stephanie Majewski, associate professor, physics
Brad Nolen, associate professor, chemistry and biochemistry
Alexander Polishchuk, professor, mathematics
Laura Pulido, professor, ethnic studies
Eleonora Redaelli, associate professor, school of planning, public policy and management
Dave Sutherland, associate professor, Earth sciences
Nelson Ting, associate professor, anthropology
Elizabeth “Liz” Tippett, associate professor, law
Sarah Wald, associate professor, English and environmental studies

April 18, 2018

LAS Book Presentation – May 1st!!

Latin American Studies is excited to announce that we are hosting a LAS Book Presentation on May 1st from 2pm – 3:30pm in the EMU Diamond Lake Room (119). Professors Erin Beck, Craig Kauffman, and Kristin Yarris will be discussing their recent works (covers of the titles to be discussed are featured below). UO Duck Store will have the featured titles available for purchase, as well as some other books written by LAS-affiliated faculty. The event will have light refreshments and will be open to the public. We hope to see you there!

 

April 30, 2017

Carlos Aguirre Publishes Lima Reader

Covering more than five hundred years of history, culture, and politics, The Lima Reader captures the multiple viewpoints of the diverse peoples of Peru’s capital city. The volume traces Lima’s transformation from a pre-Columbian religious center, to the colonial “City of Kings,” to today’s vibrant and deeply divided metropolis of almost ten million people. A rich array of primary sources—including traveler accounts, essays, photographs, maps, poems, short stories, lyrics, and memoir excerpts, many appearing in English for the first time—address how Lima’s multiethnic population, class inequalities, and debates of who is a “true” limeño/a have evolved throughout the city’s history. The book also includes selections that explore Lima’s identity through its food, sports culture, festivals, and sense of humor. Intended for travelers, students, and scholars alike, The Lima Reader is an invaluable introduction to the complex social tensions and cultural history of Lima and its people.

About The Author(s)
Carlos Aguirre is Professor of History at the University of Oregon and the author of The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience, 1850–1935, also published by Duke University Press.

Charles F. Walker is Professor of History, Director of the Hemispheric Institute on the Americas, and MacArthur Foundation Endowed Chair in International Human Rights at the University of California, Davis, and the author of Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath and Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1840, both also published by Duke University Press.

February 12, 2017

Balbuena Publishes Homeless Tongues

Homeless Tongues: Poetry and Languages of the Sephardic Diaspora

Finalist for the 2016 National Jewish Book Awards in the category of Sephardic Culture, sponsored by the Jewish Book Council.

This book examines a group of multicultural Jewish poets to address the issue of multilingualism within a context of minor languages and literatures, nationalism, and diaspora. It introduces three writers working in minor or threatened languages who challenge the usual consensus of Jewish literature: Algerian Sadia Lévy, Israeli Margalit Matitiahu, and Argentine Juan Gelman. Each of them—Lévy in French and Hebrew, Matitiahu in Hebrew and Ladino, and Gelman in Spanish and Ladino—expresses a hybrid or composite Sephardic identity through a strategic choice of competing languages and intertexts. Monique R. Balbuena’s close literary readings of their works, which are mostly unknown in the United States, are strongly grounded in their social and historical context. Her focus on contemporary rather than classic Ladino poetry and her argument for the inclusion of Sephardic production in the canon of Jewish literature make Homeless Tongues a timely and unusual intervention.

Monique Rodrigues Balbuena is Associate Professor of Literature in the Clark Honors College and a Participating Faculty in the LAS program.

November 6, 2015

Elena Poniatowska, Testimony, and Social Memory in Mexico: The 1985 Earthquake

November 13th, Oregon Humanities Center, Noon-1pm. Humanities Center Conference Room (159 PLC). Work-in-Progress Series talk by Lynn Stephen, 2015-16 Provost’s Senior Humanist Fellow

Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon and co-director of the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS)

Open to the public. Early arrival suggested due to limited seating. Brown bag lunches welcome. Please direct disability accommodation requests to the Humanities Center at (541) 346-3934. l.stephen_poniatowska-lecture

 

October 13, 2015

Prof. Carlos Aguirre publishes book on Censorship and Latin American Literary Boom

CarlosAguirreLaciudadylosperrosLPG-640x441Ciudad y Perros Biografia Former director of Latin American Studies at UO, Professor Carlos Aguirre (History) has published a new book entitled La ciudad y los perros. Biografía de una novela (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2015). This is a groundbreaking archival study that reconstructs the process of censorship and the difficulties experienced by Peruvian writer Vargas Llosa at the time of publishing his first novel in Franco’s Spain in 1963. Aguirre sets out to investigate the historical and cultural conditions that make possible the “manufacture” of a literary classic. He looks at the transnational networks of intellectuals and literary agents, political factions, potential diplomatic conflicts and the background tensions of the Cold War in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Revolution.

You can read an interview with Prof. Aguirre by Luis Rodríguez Pastor here.