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, working to end the charter imposed by General Pinochet in 1980. Professor Couso will analyze the origins, relevance, and implications for Latin America of Chile's imminent constituent process, which is, in many ways, unprecedented: the first to happen in times of pandemia; one that could end what is perhaps the world's most neoliberal constitution; and, last but not least, the first one to include gender parity as a foundational principle.
Javier Couso received his Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from UC Berkeley. He is Professor of Law and Director of the Constitutional Law Program at Universidad Diego Portales (Chile).
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 American and contemporary art with an emphasis on feminist art and gender studies.
CLAS Virtual Event