2023-24 Event Series

Black and white picture of Marisol de la Cadena with a cow

The 2023-2024 Academic Year has a full and diverse program of events. Events may be online via Zoom, in-person, or a hybrid of the two. 

Radio CLACS

Radio CLACS es una nueva serie que busca hilar temas como democracia, movimientos sociales y neo-colonialismo en la región. El último viernes de cada mes tendremos en conversación a dos panelistas sobre la situación política y social de su país. Cada episodio se centrará en un país distinto de América Latina y el Caribe, pero se busca responder las mismas preguntas: Democracia: ¿Qué le está pasando a la democracia? Movimientos Sociales: ¿Cuál es su relación y participación con la democracia? Economía: ¿Cómo se percibe el neocolonialismo? Los episodios serán en español y se transmitirán por nuestro canal de YouTube a las 12 pm en California.

Spring 2024

Jan 26 | Radio CLACS: Chile 

Diamela Eltit escritora chilena, Premio Nacional de Literatura y Profesora Distinguida Global en el programa de Escritura Creativa en español en NYU.

Héctor Nahuelpan historiador Mapuche y académico de la Universidad de Los Lagos (Chile). 

Feb 23 | Radio CLACS: Argentina

Alejandro Bercovich economista, periodista, presentador y locutor radial.

Chana Mamani Aymara migrante, escritora decolonial y activista antiracista.

Moira Millán escritora Mapuche weychafe y activista. 

Mar 22 | Radio CLACS: Brasil

André Nicolitt Professor da Universidade Federal Fluminense. 

Flávia Oliveira Jornalista, especializada em economia

Apr 26 | Radio CLACS: México

María Minera 

Dahlia de la Cerda

Moderador: Alfonso Fierro

Summer 2024

May 31 | Radio CLACS

Jun 28 | Radio CLACS

Jul 26 | Radio CLACS

New Vocabularies, New Grammars: Imagining Other Worlds

This academic year programming will focus on critics and intellectuals who, in their forms of writing and thinking, undo the divisions and separations between disciplines and genres, and between political action and intellectual engagement. In this practice of border/crossing, new languages and grammars can be imagined to signify other worlds to resist and oppose the imposed violence of colonial epistemes. These scholars, critics, and political actors offer a dynamism of the indeterminacy, inviting practices that bring together words and worlds. Each visit will have two components, a lecture and, the following day, a seminar led by the guest speaker with readings material available by those who sign up.

Fall 2023

Sep 21 | Marisol de la Cadena 

Marisol de la Cadena is an anthropologist working through what she calls “ontological openings,” interested in ethnographic concepts – those that blur the distinction between theory and the empirical because they are not without the latter.

Nov 9 | Maylei Blackwell

Scales of Resistance: Indigenous Women’s Transborder Activism

Maylei Blackwell’s book, Scales of Resistance: Indigenous Women’s Transborder Activism (Duke 2023), draws on twenty-five years of research accompanying indigenous women’s organizing in Mexico and its diaspora and over 70 oral histories. She is the author of the landmark ¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement (University of Texas, 2011) as well as a co-editor of ¡Chicana Movidas! New Narratives of Activism and Feminism in the Movement Era (University of Texas, 2018). She is the co-editor of the Critical Latinx Indigeneities special issue of Latino Studies and has organized the working group of the same name. She is a Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles where she is affiliated in LGBT Studies. She co-created and co-directed the digital story platform Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles (mila.ssc.ucla.edu). Maylei is currently working on rematriating historical memory and seeding Indigenous social movements through the Mobile Indigenous Community Archive (MICA) in collaboration with Indigenous social movements.

Spring 2024

Jan 25 | André Nicolitt 

Justiça e Literatura: Escovando a contra pelo em prosas e versos do Brasil

André Nicolitt is a Judge of the Court of Justice of the State of Rio de Janeiro and professor of Criminal Procedure at Fluminense Federal University in Brazil. Dr. Nicolitt obtained his PhD in Law at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa – Lisboa.

Feb 8 | Yina Jimenez Suriel

de montañas submarinas el fuego hace islas: A Conversation Between Curator Yina Jiménez Suriel and Professor Natalia Brizuela

Yina Jiménez Suriel is a curator and researcher with a master’s degree in visual studies. Associate editor of the magazine Contemporary & Latin America and the Caribbean. She’s curator at large of the Caribbean Art Initiative.

Apr 11 | Cristina Rivera Garza 

Bedri Distinguished Writers Series

Cristina Rivera Garza is an author, translator and critic. Recent publications include Liliana’s Invincible Summer (Hogarth, 2023), which was long listed for the National Book Award in nonfiction. The Taiga Syndrome, trans. by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana, (Dorothy Project, 2018) was awarded the 2018 Shirley Jackson Award. Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country, trans. by Sarah Booker (The Feminist Press, 2020) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle for Criticism. In 2020, she was a MacArthur Fellow and is currently Artist-In-Residence at DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) in Berlin. She is M.D. Anderson Distinguished Professor and founder of the PhD Program in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston, Department of Hispanic Studies.

*Presented by the Department of English. 

Novedades/Lançamentos: New Scholarship @ Berkeley

This series will highlight new work from UC Berkeley scholars on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Fall 2023

Oct 5 | Laura J. Enriquez

Children of the Revolution: Violence, Inequality and Hope in Nicaraguan Migration

Laura J. Enríquez is Associate Chair, Director of Undergraduate Studies, and Professor in the UC Berkeley Sociology Department. Enríquez’s current project explores what happens when Latin Americans – most especially women – find themselves unable to improve their own and their family’s prospects in their home country.

Spring 2024

Feb 1 | Margaret Chowning 

Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750-1940

Margaret Chowning is Professor and Sonne Chair in Latin American History in the History Department at UC Berkeley. Her research interests are Mexico, the late colonial period and nineteenth century, Women, Church, and Social and Economic History in Latin America. 

May 1 | Juana María Rodríguez

Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex

Juana María Rodríguez is Professor of Ethnic Studies and Core faculty in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on racialized sexuality and gender; queer of color theory and activism; affect and aesthetics; technology and media arts; law and critical race theory; and Latinx and Caribbean literatures and cultures.

*Presented by the Social Studies Matrix. 

Faculty and Student Series

Event series organized by Berkeley faculty and students, cosponsored by CLACS

CLACS Working Groups*

Language Revitalization

The Language Revitalization Working Group (LRWG), co-hosted by the Linguistics and Ethnic Studies departments, focuses on discussing theories, methodologies, and applications of language revitalization (LR) in a variety of world contexts.

Group Leaders: 

Tzintia Araceli Montaño Ramírez, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Linguistics, UC Berkeley.

Måsi Santos, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Linguistics, UC Berkeley.

Latin American and Caribbean Socionatures 

The Latin American and Caribbean Socionatures Working Group is an interdisciplinary community organized around the exploration of the histories, dynamics, and conflicts surrounding the co-constitution of nature-society across Latin America and its fluid boundaries.

Group Leaders: 

Maria Villalpando Paez, Ph.D. Candidate, Energy and Resources Program, UC Berkeley.

Jesús Alejandro García A., Ph.D. Candidate, ESPM, UC Berkeley.

Andrés Caicedo, Ph.D. Student, ESPM, UC Berkeley.

Sebastián Rubiano, Ph.D. Student, ESPM, UC Berkeley.

Feb 12 | Laura Pulido: Surplus White Nationalism and GOP Climate Obstruction 

*Click here for more information on CLACS Working Group Grants

CLACS Co-Sponsored Event Series*

Latin America Media 

Oct 16 | Martina Broner 

Martina Broner, Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Dartmouth College.

Mar 4 | Paloma Duong

Paloma Duong, Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

This series is cosponsored by the Berkeley Center for New Media. 

Fotos Desaparecidas: Disparate Memories of the Peruvian Internal Armed Conflict

On the 20th anniversary of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report, this event series focuses on the legacies of photographic archives documenting the country’s internal armed conflict (1980-2000).

According to the Final Report, of the nearly 70,000 people killed, 75% were Indigenous (the majority Quechua), and 40% were from the Andean region of Ayacucho. This series puts Quechua-speaking photographers from Ayacucho in dialogue with other artists, curators, and academics to discuss disparate memories of the internal armed conflict in the context of Peru’s current political crisis. The series consists of virtual conversations and hybrid exhibitions of photographs from the epicenter of the conflict that have never before been published.

This series is organized by Emily Fjaellen Thompson, Ph.D. Candidate, Sociocultural Anthropology, UC Berkeley.

Sep 28 | Conversatorio I: Carlos Valer Delgado y Jaime Urrutia Ceruti

Oct 17 | Conversatorio II: Edilberto Oré Cárdenas y Juan Mendoza Montesinos

Nov 17 | Exhibition: Hugo Ned Alarcón. Fotografías de Ayacucho (1980-1990)

Mar 5 | Conversatorio III: Alejandro Coronado Reyes

*Click here for more information on the CLACS Co-Sponsored Event Series Grants