Latin American Working Group Series: Diane Nelson
Discussion with DIANE NELSON (Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University)
Location: Bolivar House
The Latin America Working Group (LAWG) is an interdisciplinary, discussion-based working group that focuses on the collaborative development of research questions and analysis grounded in Latin America as a concept and as a region, constituted as it is by a particular set of historical legacies arising from slavery and colonialism. The purpose of this workshop is to create a space for testing and thinking through ideas that expand upon, contradict, or otherwise respond to existing theories and theorists of Latin America. This quarter will highlight the work of fellow peers and professors whose research questions—addressed through art, social analysis, performance, ethnography, etc—engage in intellectual conversation with theorists of and from Latin America.
Please email Adela at adelaz [at] stanford.edu (adelaz[at]stanford[dot]edu) or Jameelah at morrisji [at] stanford.edu (morrisji[at]stanford[dot]edu) with any questions.
******Graduate students from all disciplines are warmly welcomed.********
Thur, April 18th 2019: Diane Michele Nelson, Duke University
Our session will take place Thurs, April 18th, from 6:00 to 7:30 PM in Bolivar House (Center for Latin American Studies). Dinner and drinks will be served!
About the speaker: "I began fieldwork in Guatemala in 1985 exploring the impact of civil war on highland indigenous communities with a focus on the more than 100,000 people made into refugees and 200,000 people murdered in what the United Nations has called genocidal violence. Since then my research has sought to understand the causes and effects of this violence, including the destruction and reconstruction of community life (Guatemala: Los Polos de Desarrollo: El Caso de la Desestructuracin de las Comunidades Indigenas CEIDEC1988). In A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (University of California Press 1999) I describe the relationship between the Guatemalan state and the Mayan cultural rights movement. When asked about indigenous organizing many Guatemalans call it "a finger in the wound." How do material bodies those literally wounded in 35- years of civil war, and those locked in the fear-laden embrace of sexual conquest, domestic labor, mestizaje, and social change movements relate to the wounded body politic? My work draws on popular culture like jokes, rumors, global TV, and subjugated dreams of a "new race" as well as contemporary theories of political economy, subject-formation, the post-colonial, memory, and ethnic, national, gender, and sexual identifications. It explores the relations among Mayan rights activists, ladino (non-indigenous) Guatemalans, the state, and transnational contexts including anthropologists. My new project grows from my interests in cultural studies and cyborg anthropology and explores science and technology development in Guatemala and Latin America more generally. I am focusing on laboratory and clinical research on vector and blood-borne diseases like malaria and dengue and the intersection of this knowledge production with health care in the midst of neo-liberal reforms and popular demands."
Hope you see you all soon!Adela y Jameelah