Announcements: 2008-2009
Katz Center for Mexican Studies presents the 2009 spring Seminar Series
Through the Tinker Visiting Professorship, CLAS hosts distinguished scholars, practitioners, activists, and journalists from Latin America and Iberia for brief research and teaching residencies. Next quarter, CLAS will proudly welcome Tinker Visiting Professor João de Pina-Cabral to the Center.
Each quarter, the Katz Center for Mexican Studies invites visiting and U of C scholars to present their work in the Mexican Seminar Series, providing Mexican studies faculty and students with opportunities to debate and discuss scholarly research and inquiry on Mexico. This spring, the Mexican Seminar Series will include four presentations reflecting a diverse range of themes and disciplinary approaches to studying contemporary Mexican history.
The series will begin on Tuesday, April 28 with a presentation by Marianne Braig, Professor at the Latin American Institute of the Free University of Berlin, "EntreMundos: Transnational Approaches to the Formation and Transformation of Space and Spatial Orders Learning from Mexican Experiences." On Tuesday, May 5, Katz Center Research Associate Judith Boruchoff will present "Mexican Migrant Politics in Chicago: Political Culture in Transnational Contexts." Ms. Boruchoff's research investigates cultural mechanisms through which transnational communities are formed and maintained, hometown organizations, Mexican government programs for its citizens in the United States, and the consequences of such transnational phenomena for the nation-state. Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, director of the Centro de Estudios Históricos at El Colegio de México will present "Temas y problemas de la historia contemporánea de México" (1950s-1980s) on Thursday, May 14. Professor Rodríguez specializes in twentieth-century Mexican history, urbanity, and cultural transitions of the twentieth century in Mexico. On Tuesday, May 19, Stephanie Schütze, Assistant Professor at the Latin American Institute, Free University of Berlin will present "Chicago-Michoacán: Transnational Participation of Mexican Migrants in their Home Communities." The series will conclude with a presentation by Georgetown University Professor of History John Tutino. Professor Tutino will present his work on Querétaro and the eastern Bajío in "Forging Atlantic Capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America" on Thursday, May 28.
Dr. Friedrich Katz, Professor Emeritus of Latin American History and namesake of the Katz Center will also take part in the series. Professor Katz will present a recent paper, "The Fall of the First Democratic Government in Mexico." The date of his presentation has been postponed, but will be rescheduled shortly. Learn more about Professor Katz's body of work by clicking here.
The Mexican Seminar Series is open to the public. All lectures for the Series are held on the second floor of the Social Sciences Building, in the John Hope Franklin room, #224. Lunch is provided for those who register in advance. Learn more about this spring's Seminar Series here.
CLAS welcomes Tinker Visiting Professors for Spring 2009
Portuguese anthropologist João de Pina-Cabral will be visiting from the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon, where he is a leading scholar on family and kinship in Iberia, as well as the Lusophone colonial world. Professor de Pina-Cabral will teach a course entitled, "New vocabularies of method in social and cultural anthropology," which will explore the reconstruction of these vocabularies, and the renewal of the methodological heritage of kinship studies. This course will be taught in the Department Anthropology.
Migration and Human Rights in the Age of Globalization: The Case of the North American Corridor
This fall, the journal of Migración y Desarollo devoted its tenth issue to selected works from "Migration and Human Rights in the North American Corridor: Dilemmas, Contradictions, and Challenges," a conference organized by the Center for Latin American Studies in October of 2007. Co-edited by Jorge Durand, Andreas Feldmann, Susan Gzesh, and Emilio Kourí, these essays represent a multidisciplinary exploration of the relationship between migration and human rights in the North American migration corridor.
This multidisciplinary research project brought anthropologists, historians, political scientists and sociologists from the academic community together with public policy analysts and human rights advocates to explore the relationship between migration and human rights in the processes of emigration, transit and immigration between Central America, Mexico, the US, and Canada.
The migration of Mexican and Central American nationals to the United States represents the largest migratory flow in the region and is among the largest in the world. Because of its geographic position, Mexico has become a crucial transit country for migrants trying to reach the US and Canada, while also becoming a destination of its own, as increasing numbers of workers, mostly undocumented Central Americans, migrate there each year to work in agriculture, construction, and domestic service. Globalization and concomitant transformations in the economic and social structures of the region have generated a dramatic increase in the flow of migrant workers into Mexico.
Both the academic and human rights literature on migration have often failed to study this social phenomenon as an integrated and complex migration corridor system.
This multi-faceted research endeavor investigated the logic violations of economic, social and cultural rights, infringements of civil rights perpetrated by state agents, and other abuses perpetrated by private individuals (e.g., employers, criminals) who prey upon migrants; the intersection between the root causes of migration, and the structural/societal conditions in which human rights violations against migrants in the North American corridor occur; and the efforts of governments and civil society to protect this vulnerable population.
CLAS 40th Anniversary:
Reflections on Latin American Studies: 1968-2008
November 7, 2008
This fall, CLAS celebrated its 40th anniversary with "Reflections on Latin American Studies: 1968-2008," a talk with CLAS Director Dain Borges, John Coatsworth, and Friedrich Katz on the legacies and futures of Latin American Studies. This event was held on November 7 at the Quadrangle Club Library Room.
Click here to read about this event.
MA Thesis Conference
On November 8, CLAS students and faculty joined the 2007-2008 MA cohort for their thesis presentations and for a CLAS Alumni Career Panel.
MA Thesis Presentations:
Jessica Lester (MA expected '09) Thesis: "Home Bodies: Recognition of Difference in Racially Ambiguous Households in Costa Rica" Advisor: Kesha Fikes
Clare Buttry (MA '08) Thesis: "Evo soy yo: Multinationalism in Bolivian Politics and Cinema" Advisor: Alan Kolata
Molly O'Toole (MA '08) Thesis: "The Craft of National Romance: The Role of the Decorative Arts in the Post-Revolutionary Construction of the Mexican National Persona" Advisor: Emilio Kourí
Lindsey McKay (MA '08) Thesis: "Dairy and Development in the Dominican Republic" Advisor: Emilio Kourí
Martin Madera (MA '08) Thesis: "Mexican Guestworker Programs and US Immigration Policy: Reexamining the Bracero Program" Advisor: Emilio Kourí
Alexandra Price (MA '08) Thesis: "Building a Better Future for Migrants: Chicago-based Mexican Hometown Associations and Illinois State Immigrant Integration Policy" Advisor: Susan Gzesh
Life after Chicago: A Roundtable
Sarah Osten (MA '04) & Amanda Hughes on transitioning to PhD programs
Chris Gamble (MA '02) & Willis Niederfrank (MA expected '09) on careers as Chicago Public School teachers
CLAS welcomes Tinker Visiting Professors for Fall 2008
Through the Tinker Visiting Professorship, CLAS hosts distinguished professors, practitioners, activists, and/or journalists from Latin America and Iberia for brief research and teaching residencies. This fall, CLAS is proud to welcome three Tinker Visiting Professors to the center.
Mexican journalist and acclaimed memoirist Alma Guillermoprieto will teach Looking for History: Chronicles of Contemporary Latin America, a course on journalism and the Latin American metropolis that will explore how chroniclers of contemporary Latin American history produce this particular genre. Texts will give an overview of the contemporary history of Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Chilean diplomat and novelist Jorge Edwards teach My Personal History of the "Boom," reflecting on his personal experience regarding the genesis of the "boom" period in the Latin American novel with a close view of the authors that Edwards knew during the 1970s, among them Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, and Jose Lezama Lima.
The Mexican economist and policy expert Fausto Hernández-Trillo will teach a course at the Harris School of Public Policy which will examine different economic public policies recently undertaken in Mexico that intend to address poverty alleviation, and fiscal and financial policies, among others.
Hemi-Chicago: The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics
Board Meeting and Mini-Encuentro
The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics is a collaborative, multilingual, and interdisciplinary consortium of institutions, artists, scholars, and activists throughout the Americas. Working at the intersection of scholarship, artistic expression, and politics, the organization explores embodied practice-performance-as a vehicle for the creation of new meaning and the transmission of cultural values, memory, and identity.
Events will be held at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Northwestern University. Click here for a full schedule of events.
Welcome to our new website!
In our growing effort to prioritize electronic media as our chief source of communication, our once quarterly newsletter will soon become an annual publication. Of course, more frequent updates on CLAS news and events can always be found on our website, or in our weekly e-newsletter, clas-boletin. Click here to be added to our mailing list.
