Fall 2012
Friday, September 14, 2012 Hendrick Chapel 7:00 pm
Positions of Dissent and Moving Borders: Ray Smith Symposium kick-off event
In keeping with the foci of this year's Ray Smith Symposia, Syracuse University hosted a special kick-off event devoted to dissent and displacement. The program, titled "Feelings on the Outside," included a community panel discussion, live music, a mini-exhibition, and a reception.
This year's themes were "Moving Borders: The Culture and Politics of Displacement in and from Latin America and the Caribbean," organized and presented by the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean (PLACA), and "Positions of Dissent," organized and presented by the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), in conjunction with an interdisciplinary group of faculty from across campus. The symposia are enabled by a major bequest from the estate of Ray W. Smith '21, administered by The College of Arts and Sciences.
Spring 2012
Problems and Solutions of Starting an NGO
Co-sponsored by the Transnational NGO Initiative
April 4, 2012 - Eggers Hall 220
5:30 - 7:30 PM
Four students from Maxwell and ESF who have founded and served as leaders of NGOs will speak about their experiences.
Panel: An Inside View of Life under Left Governments in Latin America
April 5, 2012 - Eggers Hall 341
12pm, Noon
Four South Americans - from Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador - discuss their perspectives on the changes they have experienced while living under left governments.
Spring 2011
April 14, 2011 Eggers 341 3:45 pm
José Rabasa, Long Term Visiting Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University
"Pachamamismo, or the Fictions of (the Absence of) Voice"
Pachamamismo is a term derived from the Andean deity known as the pachamama broadly known as Mother Earth. The -ismo added to the pachamama manifests a philosophy, a political agenda, a pedagogical program, an aesthetic, and a legal reflecting on the intersection of nature and culture. It may be considered as a form of primitivism in that it offers an alternative to rationalist thought. Pachamamismo has turned into a career in the context of the plurinational state of Bolivia. But it is also a career for those who make of saving and caring for Mother Earth a component of tourist enterprises. Shamans and intercultural intellectuals carve niches in the state bureaucracies and their touristic counterparts. Often tourism and bureaucracy go hand in hand. Laws protect the pachamama and festivities are recognized in purified forms as patrimonies of the nation. Pachamamismo sublimates and essentializes indigenous forms of life into Andean philosophies and practices of inter-cultural communication. Pachamamismo, beyond the specific forms it assumes in the Andes, manifests the tendency to disqualify all categories and forms of thought that have a western source. In the person of Evo Morales, the current presidents of Bolivia, pachamamismo has become a global cry for saving the earth from capitalist plunder. The spiritual leader of the globe, however, has no qualms destroying native Amazonian cultures in the name of an Amazonic capitalism. As an ideology pachamamismo carries a contradiction that destroys the same forms it seeks to preserve.
March 24, 2011 Eggers 341 3:45 pm
George Yúdice, Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures and Latin American Studies, University of Miami
"Migration and Interculturality" 
This lecture has two parts. The first addresses the anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe and the U.S., and in particular the rejection of immigrant ethnic identities and the call for assimilation. Until recently, the integration of migrants in several European societies focused on interculturality (the mutually agreed upon interaction of various groups with the aim of beneficial coexistence for all), but the tide seems to have turned and leader after leader has renounced both multiculturalism and interculturality. The second part examines the challenges that multiculturalism and pan-ethnic identification (e.g., becoming Latinos or Asian-Americans) raises for immigrants and their children in the US. This is particularly pointed with regard to Salvadoran immigrants who are being courted by their home country governments as crucial actors in bringing development, particularly through remittances. Hence, the government, business groups, and intergovernmental organizations promote the idea of the Salvadoran transnation, even to the point of measuring development by factoring in the economic and other indicators of Salvadorans in the US. However, will patterns of integration in the US affect this transnation gambit? What are the issues at stake for Salvadoran migrants as they confront racism in the US and an expedient welcome in El Salvador?
Co-sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics
March 10, 2011 Eggers 341 3:30pm
Abril Trigo, Distinguished Humanities Professor of Latin American Cultures, Ohio State University
"Globalization and Citizenship"
As a consequence of the profound economic, social, political, ecological and cultural transformations unleashed by globalization, the meaning and scope of citizenship has changed dramatically over the last years. Citizenship, a central political category which defined and articulated the civic rights and cultural identity of the subject in modern times, entered into crisis alongside its social and political counterpart, the nation-state. What is the nature of citizenship in the present, global world? How is it determined? What are the main processes that affect the meanings of citizenship nowadays? Is there a global citizenship, and if there is, what does it mean? What are the effects of transnational diasporas on contemporary notions of citizenship? What are the effects of consumerism? What are the effects of new technologies and the new conception of time and space? These are some of the issues this lecture will address.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics
January 26, 2011 Eggers 341 4:00 pm
Sydney Hutchinson, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, Syracuse University
"Performing the tíguera: Female accordionists in Dominican merengue típico"
Merengue típico is unique among Caribbean musical genres for being the only one in which women have been more noticeable as instrumentalists than as singers. The reasons for their relative success in this traditionally machista arena are not immediately apparent, but can be tied to reasons from the practical, such as learning situations; to the social, like
accelerating transnational migration; the historical, including key figures in típico and in Dominican history; and even to the importance of carnival and the carnivalesque in the Dominican national imagination.
The classic male típico figure is the tíguere, the dandified but sexually aggressive "tiger" who hustles his way through life, gaining respect by successfully making his living in the streets, on the margins of capitalism. As female accordionists try to make their way in the “man’s world” of típico, they develop a feminine counterpart to this male role: they become assertive, sensual, yet strangely respected tígueras (a Dominicanism for “tigress”) who look like women but play and perhaps even sing like men. The creation of this female role (new but not entirely without precedent in the Dominican Republic) points to some ambiguities in the construction of Dominican masculinity and femininity, ambiguities that have become even more noticeable through the appearance of cross-dressing male merengueros.
This paper is based on fieldwork conducted among New York Dominicans since 2001 and in Santiago, Dominican Republic since 2004. It examines the performance of gender in merengue tipico through the work of key accordionists such as Tatico Henriquez and Fefita la Grande, while also drawing upon the author’s own experiences as a female accordionist to explore the ways in which this music helps both to construct and to deconstruct traditional Dominican gender roles.
Fall 2010
December 10, 2010 Eggers 032 4:00 - 6:30pm
Alan Knight, Professor of the History of Latin America, Oxford University
"The ‘Cosmic Revolution’: the Mexican Revolution (1910-2010) in Comparative Global Perspective"
This year, the Mexican Revolution turns one hundred. Among the many possible perspectives on this major event, one is outward-looking, global and comparative. This lecture, involving a breakdown of the main sociopolitical components of the Mexican Revolution (1910-40), evaluates it in light of other major world revolutions, arguing (against some revisionist theses) that it belongs in this rare category (it is, in other words, a ‘real’ ‘social’ revolution); and that, without being a simple carbon-copy, it bears comparison with discernible elements of contrasting revolutions - including ‘bourgeois’ revolutions, like the French; ‘socialist’ revolutions like the Russian, Chinese and Cuban; and ‘nationalist’ revolutions (all of the above, and more).
December 6, 2010 4:00 pm Maxwell Auditorium
Jorge Rodríguez Beruff.jpg "Rodriguez Beruff Small Photo")
Dean of the College of General Studies, Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico
"From the Depression to the Second World War: The Memoirs of two American Governors of Puerto Rico"
Dr. Rodríguez Beruff has edited the memoirs of two American governors of Puerto Rico, William D. Leahy (1939-1940) and Rexford G. Tugwell (1941-1946), and published a study on the political transition during the late thirties in Puerto Rico, Strategy as Politics. This lecture will be based in this trilogy of books and focused on the transformations that ocurred during this period, both in the dynamics of internal politics and in Puerto Rico's relations with the United States.
November 15, 2010 Eggers 151 12:15 - 1: 45 (lunch will be served)
"The Mexican Revolution at 100"
Panelists:
Patricia Martin, Professor of Geography, University of Montreal
Martin will consider the legacy of the Mexican revolution in relationship to the forms and nature of political violence in contemporary Mexico. She will draw on two current research projects that she is undertaking in Oaxaca, one that examines the phenomenon of femicide, and one that looks at the state repression of social movements in the 1970s, in order to assess the degree to which the Mexican revolution informs contemporary forms of violence.
Matt Cleary, Associate Professor of Political Science, Syracuse University
Cleary will explore the revolutionary origins of many of Mexico’s current political institutions, particularly the electoral system and the strict prohibition against reelection. He argues that while these institutions may have contributed to Mexico’s long period of stability during the 20th century, in the post-2000 era they have had a debilitating effect on the quality of democratic governance.
Gustavo Flores-Macías, Assistant Professor of Government, Cornell University
Flores-Macías will elaborate on his current research on the militarization of anti-drug efforts in contemporary Mexico. He will tie this contemporary use of the military to the evolution of civil-military relations in Mexico since the 1910 Revolution.
Gladys McCormick, Assistant Professor of History, Syracuse University
McCormick will consider the question of whether or not the 1910 Revolution really mattered in the political identity of Mexico’s rural peoples during the mid-twentieth century. She will draw on the case of Morelos in south-central Mexico to elaborate her arguments in relation to the communities that fought under the leadership of Emiliano Zapata, the quintessential revolutionary hero.
October 11, 2010 Eggers 341 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Melissa Castillo-Garsow, MA Candidate in English, Fordham University.jpg "Castillo-Garsow Talk")
"A Commitment to Rap: A Brazilian answer to mainstream Hip Hop"
According to the late rapper, Sabotagem, in Brazil, “o rape é compromisso” (rap is a commitment). In many ways, Brazilian Hip Hop developed under similar conditions as in the United States – like the first artists out of the South Bronx, young people in Brazil began rapping as a way to express the economic and social problems of their favelas (the poorest and most crime infested neighborhoods of the country). Nevertheless, today, Brazil’s Hip Hop scene looks very little like the multi-million dollar industry of the United States. In contrast to today’s commercially successful and widely embraced American brand of Hip Hop, in Brazil this music continues to be characterized by its opposition to corporations, highly political themes, and scorn towards lyrics that boast about wealth or sexual conquests.
By comparing the historical roots and development of Hip Hop both in the United States and Brazil, it is clear that despite numerous similarities and shared origins, this genre holds a very different place and purpose in these two countries.
October 11, 2010 Eggers 341 3:30 - 6:00 pm
Melissa Castillo-Garsow, MA Candidate in English, Fordham University
"Representing the Streets: Space and place in urban literature"
Since the late 1990s, Street Literature, also known as Urban Fiction or Ghetto Lit, has emerged a new type of African American popular fiction, mainly through self-publishing and street vending. Initiated by Omar Tyree with his novel Flyy Girl in 1993, Street Lit became prominent with the bestseller The Coldest Winter Ever written by the activist and author Sister Souljah in 1999.
The realities of inner cities, drugs and crime resonate for the authors and consumer of Street Literature in the places and spaces of the novels. Although thay may not be the place of all the readers, the specificity, the tightness of the world reaches across cities. It is the common marginalization, the power of the streets that resonates in the imagined world these books portray and makes them important to recognize and analyze.