Working Group Awardees

CLAS-sponsored Working Groups 

Cafecito Quechua Working Group

Faculty Advisor: Marisol Necochea

Student Organizers: Caroline Bailey and Peter Taylor

Cafecito Quechua promotes Andean issues and cultures, inviting members to share their experiences with the region. Through weekly meetings, they have been engaging the Stanford and wider Bay Area communities on the Quechua language and culture. This working group will continue to bring together academics, organizations, and practitioners working on or researching the Andean region.

Indigenous Futurisms: On the Movement of Knowledge and Culture

Faculty Advisor: Marisol Necochea

Student Organizers: Diana Sarai Cisneros, Kimberly Arriaga-Gonzalez, and Myrka Odalis Cruz

The working group critiques the narrative of conquest by bringing in and centering Indigenous voices within Latin America. As Indigenous students at Stanford,  this working group is interested in the liberatory narratives of imagined futures and the movement of culture, knowledge, and Indigenous communities within Latin America. The working group intends to lay out the groundwork for the interdisciplinary network of student interests.

Latinidades and the Word

Faculty Advisor: Pedro Regalado

Student Organizer: Alexandros Orphanides

Latinidades and the Word seeks to engage interdisciplinary scholars, writers, and artists in critical discussions, readings, and workshops on the making, remaking, and representation of Latine life across the hemisphere through the written and spoken word, broadly construed. Whereas the social sciences often engage in definitional, descriptive, or taxonomic approaches to identity, the humanities and arts often draw from imaginative reserves to represent and reimagine the unfolding of our lives. This space seeks to cultivate discussions with writers of fiction, poetry, and cultural criticism from Latine communities in the US and beyond to consider how life is lived amidst local, national, and global currents. By engaging in the particularities and situated nature of artistic literary representations, this working group will endeavor to curate opportunities to engage with the insights about the human condition that emerge from the distinct and diverse communities and experiences that become subsumed into Latinidad. 

Narratives of Violence and Resistance in Latin America

Faculty Advisor: Rebecca Tarlau

Student Organizers: Lucia Huerta, Kimberly Arriaga-Gonzalez, and Luca DeCola

Narratives of Violence and Resistance in Latin America proposes a rigorous, multidisciplinary examination of this phenomenon, focusing on how historical violence is reflected and perpetuated in the present, and how communities respond through creative means. The relevance of this study is vital, as the violence we study is an active force of social inequality, forced displacement, and state impunity. This working group will identify and analyze themes that demonstrate the permanence of this issue in the region.