Semester Calendar
PANEL DISCUSSION
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the way academic libraries and archives have traditionally worked by limiting access to physical collections. In the Caribbean and Latin America, the lack of access to materials such as books, periodicals, and ephemera has been felt acutely. The intense economic, social, and political pressures in these regions have forced some regional governments to provide less attention to issues of education.
Many recent webinars have given rank librarians an opportunity to discuss the challenges of securing access to materials and providing instruction to students, scholars, and faculty. But among library administrators and information professionals, these conversations have largely been dominated by men. This panel tries to correct this aberration by providing a venue for female library directors and information studies faculty to offer their perspectives on COVID-19’s effects on the institutions they manage.
Virtual event via Zoom
Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj
In this talk, Dr. Velásquez Nimatuj will examine the theme of migration from an indigenous perspective, within a larger context of racial oppression.
Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj is a Maya-K’iche’ journalist and activist. She is an international spokeswoman for Indigenous communities in Central America and was the first Maya-K’iche’ woman to earn a doctorate in social anthropology in Guatemala.
CLAS Virtual Event
Almudena Bernabeu
Almudena Bernabeu will relate the journey to bring Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano to trial in Spain, where he was recently sentenced to 133 years in prison for the massacre of six Jesuit priests and two women in 1989. This trial and conviction mark only the second time in which a case brought before Spanish courts went forward on the basis of a universal duty to provide access to national courts for human rights abuse victims. Although the Pinochet case created historic momentum, many obstacles have impeded these cases and prevented accountability efforts from succeeding. The Jesuits’ case has the potential to recover an important practice providing justice and preventing further abuses.
Almudena Bernabeu, the co-founder and director of Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers, is a renowned transitional justice and international human rights lawyer. She led the investigation and prosecution for the Jesuit murders, leading to Inocente Orlando Montano’s extradition. In 2012, Bernabeu was included in TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people.
CLAS Virtual Event
Paul Pierson, Carlos Milani, and Elizabeth McKenna
In Let them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality, co-author Paul Pierson analyzes the slide toward authoritarianism in the United States and examines the future of the country. He will discuss those ideas with Carlos Milani and Liz Mckenna in Brazil, who will also comment on the implications for the Americas.
Paul Pierson is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Carlos R. S. Milani is an Associate Professor at the Rio de Janeiro State University’s Institute for Social and Political Studies. Elizabeth (Liz) McKenna is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
CLAS Virtual Event
Lorenzo Meyer
Lorenzo Meyer will discuss Mexico's current situation in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis and the challenges the country faces going forward.
Lorenzo Meyer is among Mexico’s leading historians, a public intellectual, and emeritus professor of History at El Colegio de México in Mexico City. He has been a columnist for the national newspaper Reforma as well as the host of Primer Plano, a political television show on the nation's largest network.
CLAS Virtual Event
Javier Couso
On October 25th, Chileans will vote in a critically important plebiscite. For the first time in the nation's history, the people will decide whether to have a new, democratically-enacted constitution, which would end the charter imposed by General Pinochet in 1980. Professor Couso will analyze the origins, relevance, and implications for Latin America in Chile's imminent constituent process, which is, unprecedented in many ways: it is the first to happen in times of pandemia; it could end what is perhaps the world's most neoliberal constitution; and, last but not least, it would include gender parity as a foundational principle.
Javier Couso is Professor of Law and Director of the Constitutional Law Program at Universidad Diego Portales (Chile).
CLAS Virtual Event
AfroLatinx Voices Series
Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean (BLAC) Working Group presents AfroLatinx Voices, a series of roundtable discussions between Black scholars, artists, and activists from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Each event seeks to address how race, blackness, and anti-blackness are transnationally informed always in conversation across borders, languages, and identities.
Nicole Dennis-Benn is an award-winning Jamaican novelist. She is the author of Here Comes the Sun (which won the New York Times’ 2016 “Best Book of the Year” award and the Lambda Literary Award), and Patsy (which won the Lambda Literary Award). Aya de León is an award-winning Afro-Puerto Rican writer of prose and poetry and the author of the Justice Hustlers series (which won Independent Publisher Awards and International Latino Book awards). She is a lecturer in the Department of African American Studies and the director of June Jordan's Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley.
CLAS Virtual Event
Cine Latino
Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and
Juliano Dornelles (Brazil, 2019)
A few years from now... Bacurau, a small village in the Brazilian sertão (hinterland), mourns the loss of its matriarch. Days later, its inhabitants (including one played by Sônia Braga) notice that their village has vanished from online maps, and a UFO-shaped drone is seen flying overhead. A fierce confrontation takes place when the townspeople turn the tables on the villainous outsiders, banding together to protect and maintain their remote community. 132 minutes. Portuguese and English with English subtitles.
Winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival
CLAS Virtual Event
Ramón Saldívar
Ramón Saldívar's influential 2006 book The Borderlands of Culture: Américo Paredes and the Transnational Imaginary remains relevant today. In this event, Professor Saldívar will reflect on how the book might help serve as a point of departure, in our current moment – starting with the 2016 election campaign's explicitly racist attacks on Black and Latinx citizenship and presence within the U.S. – for a critical, activating approach, via art and culture, to the questions of society, politics, and history that the book posed when it first appeared and that are of utmost urgency now.
Virtual event via Zoom
Denise Dresser
Denise Dresser is Professor of Political Science at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). A political analyst and columnist who writes for Reforma and Proceso, she is also the author of numerous publications on Mexican politics and U.S.-Mexico relations. Dresser received France’s Legion of Honor medal for her work on democracy, justice, gender equality, and human rights.
CLAS Virtual Event
Celia Stahr
Only 23 years old and newly married to the already world-famous Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo travelled to the United States. Her feelings of being a stranger in a strange land fueled her creative passions and an even stronger sense of Mexican identity. In this talk, Celia Stahr will discuss her new book, Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist, which tells the riveting story of how three years in the United States transformed Frida Kahlo into the artist we know today.
Celia Stahr is a professor at the University of San Francisco, where she specializes in modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on feminist art and gender studies.
CLAS Virtual Event
Cine Latino
Directed by Alejandro Landes (Colombia, 2019)
Alejandro Landes’ awe-inspiring film is set on a remote mountain in Latin America. The film tracks a young group of soldiers and rebels who keep watch over an American hostage, forming an unconventional family bound together under a shadowy force known only as The Organization. After an ambush drives the squadron into the jungle, both the mission and the intricate bonds between the group begin to disintegrate. Monos examines the chaos and absurdity of war from the unique perspective of adolescence. 103 minutes. English with Spanish subtitles.
Special Jury Award – Sundance Film Festival
CLAS Virtual Event
Information Session
CLAS Virtual Event
Cine Latino
Directed by Alvaro Delgado-Aparicio (Peru, 2019)
Segundo Paucar is a 14-year-old boy who wants to carry on his family’s legacy by becoming a master retablo (story-box) builder, just like his father. On his way to a community celebration in rural Peru, Segundo accidentally observes his father in a situation that shatters his world and everything he believes in. 101 minutes. Quechua with English subtitles.
“Delgado Aparicio’s reflective direction with a patient eye for lived-in behavior and kinetic symbolism bears artistically ripe fruit in an affectingly measured, near-perfect tour de force that demands serious attention.” — Carlos Aguilar, Los Angeles Times
CLAS Virtual Event