Books
Becoming Heritage: Recognition, Exclusion, and the Politics of Black Cultural Heritage in Colombia
| March 3, 2022 | ||
| 3:30 pm | to | 5:00 pm |
CLLAS Faculty Research Presentation
180 PLC, University of Oregon
Join CLLAS for our first 2022 faculty research presentation: “Becoming Heritage: Recognition, Exclusion, and the Politics of Black Cultural Heritage in Colombia.” Maria Fernanda Escallón (Department of Anthropology) will share her work on March 3, 2022, 3:30-5pm.
This in-person event will take place in 180 PLC. Masks are required. Attendance will be capped at 100.
Maria Fernanda Escallón is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. She was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, where she completed a BA and MA in Anthropology and Archaeology at the Universidad de Los Andes. In 2016 she completed her PhD in Anthropology at Stanford University. Before starting her doctorate, she worked in sustainable development and heritage policy-making for non-governmental organizations and Colombian public entities, including the Ministry of Culture and Bogotá’s Secretary of Culture and Tourism.
Maria Fernanda is interested in cultural heritage, race, diversity politics, ethnicity, and inequality in Latin America. Prior to joining the Anthropology Department at the University of Oregon, she was a 2015-2016 Dissertation Fellow in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. She has conducted field research in Colombia for over 10 years analyzing how and why certain multicultural policies that are ostensibly inclusive, can end up replicating, rather than dismantling, inequality and segregation across Latin America. Her latest book “Becoming Heritage: Recognition, Exclusion, and the Politics of Black Cultural Heritage in Colombia” is currently under contract with Cambridge University Press.
Her research has received support from a variety of sources, including the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Social Sciences Research Council, the Fulbright Program, the Mellon Foundation, and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Her most recent work appears in Cultural Anthropology, the International Journal of Cultural Property and the International Journal of Heritage Studies.
Founding CLLAS Director Publishes New Book on Elena Poniatowska
Faculty Publication
Founding Director and member of the CLLAS Executive Board, Lynn Stephen (Anthropology), has published a new book on Mexican intellectual and author, Elena Poniatowska.
From Duke University Press:
From covering the massacre of students at Tlatelolco in 1968 and the 1985 earthquake to the Zapatista rebellion in 1994 and the disappearance of forty-three students in 2014, Elena Poniatowska has been one of the most important chroniclers of Mexican social, cultural, and political life. In Stories That Make History, Lynn Stephen examines Poniatowska’s writing, activism, and political participation, using them as a lens through which to understand critical moments in contemporary Mexican history. In her crónicas—narrative journalism written in a literary style featuring firsthand testimonies—Poniatowska told the stories of Mexico’s most marginalized people. Throughout, Stephen shows how Poniatowska helped shape Mexican politics and forge a multigenerational political community committed to social justice. In so doing, she presents a biographical and intellectual history of one of Mexico’s most cherished writers and a unique history of modern Mexico.
https://www.dukeupress.edu/stories-that-make-history
The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public
Faculty Publication
CLLAS Director Chris Christopher Chávez has published, “The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public;” it is forthcoming.
From the publisher, the University of Arizona Press:
As a network that claims to represent the nation, NPR asserts unique claims about what it means to be American. In The Sound of Exclusion, Christopher Chávez critically examines how National Public Radio conceptualizes the Latinx listener, arguing that NPR employs a number of industry practices that secure its position as a white public space while relegating Latinx listeners to the periphery. These practices are tied to a larger cultural logic. Latinx identity is differentiated from national identity, which can be heard through NPR’s cultivation of an idealized dialect, situating whiteness at its center. Pushing Latinx listeners to the edges of public radio has crucial implications for Latinx participation in civic discourses, as identifying who to include in the “public” audience necessarily involves a process of exclusion.
See more here: https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-sound-of-exclusion
Kristin Yarris featured in the inaugural “UO Authors, Book Talks” series
| November 6, 2019 | ||
| 5:00 pm | to | 6:30 pm |
Knight Library
Browsing Room
https://around.uoregon.edu/content/faculty-books-be-featured-uo-authors-book-talks-series
Around the O, October 17, 2019—Kristin Yarris will be the first faculty member featured in the inaugural “UO Authors, Book Talks” series that begins next month.
Yarris, an associate professor of international studies, will read excerpts from her book “Care Across Generations,” followed by a discussion on the pivotal roles Nicaraguan grandmothers play in intergenerational care and transnational migration.
The debut for Yarris and “UO Authors, Book Talks” will be Nov. 6 in the Knight Library Browsing Room. The event is a recognition of University of Oregon faculty members and their books.
The second “UO Authors, Book Talks” will take place Feb. 12 in the Browsing Room. It will feature Kirby Brown, associate professor of Native American literatures, and his book “Stoking the Fire: Nationhood in Cherokee Writing, 1907-1970.”
“I can’t think of a better way to celebrate scholarly work than to put a spotlight on our faculty authors,” said Patrick Phillips, UO’s provost and senior vice president. “UO authors provide a tremendous impact with their original scholarship, and their dedicated efforts enhance the reputation of the entire university by showing the world the important contributions we make to a wide variety of fields.”
The events are sponsored by the Office of the Provost, UO Libraries, and the College of Arts and Sciences.
Yarris, who also directs the UO Global Health Program, spent a year in Managua, Nicaragua, working with Servicio Jesuita a Migrantes, a migrant justice organization. The work included taking testimonials from migrants who returned home and their family members to develop ways to better protect Nicaraguans working in Costa Rica and Mexico through changes in policy.
Through these testimonials, Yarris was able to meet 24 families and work with many of them to produce material for her dissertation, which later turned into the book. “Care Across Generations”takes a close look at grandmother care in Nicaraguan transnational families.
University Communications sat down with Yarris to discuss her experiences and her book. Portions of the interview have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: How did you find yourself in Nicaragua?
A: When I was a public health student at UCLA, I taught medical Spanish and was able to meet students who made service learning trips for medical students to go to Latin America. I went with them to Honduras once and then twice to Nicaragua as a translator for volunteer medical brigades. Through that work, I met nonprofit health organizations in Nicaragua, was able to understand the historical and cultural context better, and wanted to go back.
I got involved with a social justice organization, Witness for Peace Southwest, which advocates for change in U.S. policy toward mainly Latin America and the Caribbean. I was a volunteer and then became a member on their board of directors. That opened up opportunities for me to work in Managua.
Q: Did you receive any other cultural misconceptions around your book and the roles of grandmothers?
A: One thing that has been challenging for me — in writing the book, talking about the book, in teaching my students — is U.S. students, audiences or publics tend to jump to the conclusion that awful patriarchy exists (in other places) and we have it so good (in the U.S.) where there are no problems with gender and equality, which obviously isn’t true.
What I’ve tried to do in the book is be sensitive in talking about the layers of social, historical, cultural, economic and legal configurations that leave grandmothers particularly vulnerable to being threatened by children’s fathers who take the remittances mothers send home and why that might be happening.
Q: Would you mind explaining the relationship with fathers more?
A: It’s hard because it’s a real thing. Feminists in Nicaragua have this saying, “El machismo mata,” which means machismo kills. Which is true; there are very high rates of femicide. Women die at high numbers in Nicaragua at the hands of intimate partners, husbands, the fathers of their children. Yes, it’s a real thing. But I also don’t want to paint all Nicaraguan men with that brushstroke that they’re violent or don’t care about their children, because obviously that isn’t true.
There have been misconceptions about men, their roles, and why I didn’t talk to more men. The truth is, often they weren’t around. The households are matrifocal. I tried to get men’s voices, but the truth is that most of the care in these families is done by women.
The other misconception that I’ve had to be careful to not fall into the trap of is that mother migrants abandon their kids. I go through painstaking measures in the book to not paint mothers that way. I try to describe the factors pushing mothers to migrate and the steps they take to send remittance home for their kids. All of the mothers in my book care about their kids and are thankful their mothers can care for them. They’re waiting for when the “grand bargain” pays off, and they can be with their kids again.
Q: As you continue your work in academia, are you seeing your book complement the research you are conducting?
A: Yes, definitely. After the book, my next project was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation studying transit immigration in Central America through Mexico. The research questions I asked were less about families in migration but still about the role of migration and family care.
I spent a few summers in Sinaloa, Mexico, looking at how women were informally mobilizing along freight train lines to provide care for families in migrant situations. I’m currently working on a local project looking at networks of volunteers, refugee asylum seeker resettlements and sponsorship work in Lane County.
Q: You touched on this, but given our political climate, have you faced challenges discussing migration with students?
A: I’ve been glad that I teach classes on migration, that I have a book on migration and that my book is ethnographic. When students and other people read ethnographic work about migrants and their families, it humanizes things in a way that politics, media or tweets dehumanize and desensitize people.
Human stories help people and students ask questions like, “Why is it so hard for people who are here lawfully to bring their children with them lawfully?” They don’t realize that it is so difficult, it takes 10 years or other miscellaneous reasons why people are leaving to create a better life for their children.
—By Jessica T. Brown, University Communications
Helena María Viramontes: “Under the Feet of Jesus”
| October 21, 2019 | ||
| 4:00 pm |
2019-2020 UO Common Reading Selection: Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena María Viramontes
A story of loss and survival, Under the Feet of Jesus is a lyrical, powerful novel about the lives of the children, women, and men who endure a difficult existence and labor under dangerous conditions as migrant workers in California’s fields. Through central characters like the teenager, Estrella, and her mother, Petra, the book explores interrelated topics of farm labor, health care, material resources, and environmental justice. The title of the book refers to birth certificates and other important documents kept in a portable statue of Jesus that moves with the family to each new location along the agricultural production cycle.
Learn more about Viramontes’ Under the Feet of Jesus here.
- October 21 at 4 pm
Public Talk: EMU Ballroom - October 22 at 6 pm
Public Reading & Conversation: Eugene Public Library - October 23 at 10 am
Teaching Writing Workshop for Faculty and GEs
Sponsored by the UO Common Reading Program. CLLAS is a cosponsor for the campus visit of Helena María Viramontes.
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