Date: September 11, 2024 Time: 5:30pm Address: Global Education Center, Room 4003
ISA wishes to invite all new and returning graduate students with an interest in Latin America, the Caribbean or Latino/a communities in the U.S. to join us at the ISA graduate Student Orientation and Reception. Students can meet ISA staff, catch up with colleagues, and learn about funding opportunities, events, working groups, and other initiatives sponsored by ISA.
Light refreshments will be provided.
Nochi tlahtolmeh totlahtolwan (All languages are our languages). Linguistic diversity and public policies in Mexico: five moments
Speaker: Patricio Romeu Rábago
Date: March 21, 2024 Time: 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Round Table: Moderator Miguel LaSerna, History, Raquel Escobar, History, Abelardo de la Cruz, Religious Studies, Jamilläh Rodriguez, Linguistics
The guest speaker and the round table discussants will explore the difficult questions around multiculturalism and multiingualism and their implications for cultural autonomy and citizenship in the modern states of the Americas.
Indigenous Patrons and the Origins of Jesuit Education in Central Mexico, 1572 -1621
Speaker: Dr. Peter Villella
Date: February 15, 2024 Time: 3:30 – 5:00 PM
David Brading’s magisterial account explores the writings of Spanish conquerors, missionaries, and settlers across three and a half centuries to detail the deepest roots of patriotism and national identity in Latin America. Sweeping and erudite, it unpacks the diverse and often contradictory efforts of Spaniards and their American-born descendants to learn about and understand the lands, indigenous peoples, and folk cultures of their adopted countries. In doing so, Brading reveals how such thinkers communicated the essential symbols and ideas that would later shape nineteenth-century efforts to define nationhood and national belonging in Latin America.
After Stories: Transnational Intimacies of Postwar El Salvador
Speaker: Professor Irina Carlota Silber, Ph.D
Date: March 4, 2024 Time: 6:00 PM Address: Fedex Global Education Center Room 1005
Traveling across time and borders, Professor Silber’s research examines the memories and troubles of families in El Salvador during the postwar period and migration to the United States and how they offer us hope for the making of more just global futures.
Speaker: Ntiense Inyan, Cait Dallaire, and Camilla Ihenetu
Date: February 21, 2024 Time: 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Hear from a panel of phenomenal UNC alumni in globally focused careers! Panelists represent a variety of career options: government, private industry, NGOs, and more. They will share their professional journeys from studying (like you!) at UNC, through the career searches, networking, and life choices that led them to their current roles. In the Q&A, panelists will take your questions on everything from advice on the job hunt to sustainable career growth over the years. Wherever you are in your UNC experience, this panel is perfect for you — from first years just starting to explore their interests, to seniors scrolling Handshake and attending job fairs.
This event is co-organized with the UNC Curriculum in Global Studies.
This event will take place in the Nelsen Mandela Auditorium. Catering by Mediterranean Deli will be offered in the atrium after the panel.
The NC/CLAS 2024 program seeks to bring together scholars, specialists, and graduate students in North Carolina engaged in the diverse and multiple disciplinary domains dedicated to Latin American and Latino/a studies, past and present.
Register for the conference here by February 12, 2024 (pre-registration is required of all attendees, including all presenters).
Click the “Read More” button below for parking, registration, and schedule details. This event will count towards Campus Life Experience credits.
Funding for NC/CLAS 2024 is generously provided by the U.S. Department of Education Title VI, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, the UNC Charlotte Latin American Studies Program, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences.
The NC/CLAS 2024 program seeks to bring together scholars, specialists, and graduate students in North Carolina engaged in the diverse and multiple disciplinary domains dedicated to Latin American and Latino/a studies, past and present.
Register for the conference here by February 12, 2024 (pre-registration is required of all attendees, including all presenters).
Click the “Read More” button below for parking, registration, and schedule details. This event will count towards Campus Life Experience credits.
Funding for NC/CLAS 2024 is generously provided by the U.S. Department of Education Title VI, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, the UNC Charlotte Latin American Studies Program, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences.
Date: April 12, 2024 Time: 3:00PM – 7:00PM Address: Hanes Art Center, Room 121
The exhibition will include a display of original art created at the GBDC from April 12-19, 2024 culminating in a symposium on April 12, 2024 to address the sovereign, and political, and legal dimensions of detainee art. The symposium speakers will include the virtual participation of several released detainee artists. Legal experts will address the inter-related international law issues and the paradox within claims to human rights, with a focus on art and the rights of detainees to own and control their creative work.
Through an art exhibition and a day-long symposium, this project aims to expand our understanding of the ongoing impact of state violence and the extralegal prison Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp through the framework of art and law.
Since GBDC’s opening in 2002, the U.S. has detained 780 individuals, the vast majority of whom have been released without charge. Those who have been released are often transferred to countries pursuant to secret agreements and have been rendered “stateless.” These detainees are largely Middle Eastern, including Afghans, Saudi Arabians, Yemenis, Pakistanis, and Algerians. The violation of detainees’ rights at GBDC has been well documented; these violations include detaining people indefinitely without trial, using extreme interrogation methods including sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, and other forms of physical and psychological torture.
Symposium Schedule
2:00 – 3:00 pm: Exhibition Reception
3:00 – 3:20 pm: Introduction by Martin Brinkley, Dean of the School of Law and the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina
3:20 – 4:00 pm: Panel 1 History Lessons: The Road Starts Here
This panel provides an overview of the historical circumstances that gave rise to U.S. control of the Naval Station in Guantánamo, and participation of the state of North Carolina in the U.S. program of extraordinary rendition and torture that culminated in Guantánamo.
Christina Cowger, NC Stop Torture Now, “First in Torture Flights: North Carolina’s Role in CIA Renditions
Louis A. Pérez, Carlyle Sitterson Professor UNC Department of History “Guantánamo: From Naval Station to Detention Center”
4:00 – 5:15 pm: Panel 2 – This Art Belongs to the Artist
This Art Belongs to the Artists brings together several former detainees and survivors of Guantánamo Bay Detention Center along with attorney Beth Jacob and human rights scholar Alexandra Moore to share stories of art making as a form of protest and a necessary process for survival.
Moath Al-Awi via Alexandra Moore, Director; Professor Human Rights Institute; English, General Literature and Rhetoric, Binghamton Univ., State Univ of New York
Mansoor Adayfi, Writer and former Guantánamo prisoner
Ahmed Rabbani, Artist and Former Guantanamo prisoner 1461
Sabri Al Qurashi- Artist and former Guantánamo prisoner
Beth D Jacob, Managing Attorney, Healing and Recovery after Trauma
5:30 – 6:15 pm: Keynote Speaker
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and former UN Special Rapporteur Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights 2017-2023. “You Came too Late”: Reflection on the First UN Visit to the Detention Facility at Guantánamo Bay
6:15 – 7:00pm: Panel 3 – Social Action, Law & Art
This panel will explore the connections between art, liberation, and abolition and the growing interdisciplinary work of artists using their practices as tools towards justice and abolition. Addressing art and abolition as a framework for human rights and the law, this panel will think through critical questions around the law and the fundamental issues of freedom of expression and art as resistance.
Aliya Hussain, Center for Constitutional Rights, “Resisting Guantánamo”
Aaron Hughes & Amber Ginsburg, artists, “Remaking the Exceptional”
Background on the former detainee artwork
Between 2009 and 2017, detainees at GBDC were provided with art supplies and allowed to participate in art classes. Much of this artwork was transferred from the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center to attorneys representing Guantánamo detainees. Some detainees were permitted to claim some of their art upon their release. In late 2017, however, after a series of successful curated showings of this art across the United States, detainees remaining in Guantánamo were prohibited from transferring their art and denied ownership of their work. After intervention by human rights advocates, including two UN Special Rapporteurs, detainees were granted a limited right to take some of their artwork as deemed by the government as “practicable” upon their release while remaining subject to government claims that the art remains the property of the United States.
Co-Sponsors: UNC Law School, Institute for the Study of the Americas, College of Arts and Sciences, Institute for Arts and Humanities, Art Department, Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies, Center for European Studies, Asian American Center, Beth Jacob/ Healing and Recovery after Trauma, Department of History, Department of Communications, Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, Department of Women & Gender Studies, NC Stop Torture Now, Sociology Department, Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, and the Department of Romance Studies.
Through an art exhibition and a day-long symposium, this project aims to expand our understanding of the ongoing impact of state violence and the extralegal prison Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp through the framework of art and law.
Since GBDC’s opening in 2002, the U.S. has detained 780 individuals, the vast majority of whom have been released without charge. Those who have been released are often transferred to countries pursuant to secret agreements and have been rendered “stateless.” These detainees are largely Middle Eastern, including Afghans, Saudi Arabians, Yemenis, Pakistanis, and Algerians. The violation of detainees’ rights at GBDC has been well documented; these violations include detaining people indefinitely without trial, using extreme interrogation methods including sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, and other forms of physical and psychological torture.
The exhibition will include a display of original art created at the GBDC from April 12-19, 2024 culminating in a symposium on April 12, 2024 to address the sovereign, and political, and legal dimensions of detainee art. The symposium speakers will include the virtual participation of several released detainee artists. Legal experts will address the inter-related international law issues and the paradox within claims to human rights, with a focus on art and the rights of detainees to own and control their creative work.
Background on the former detainee artwork
Between 2009 and 2017, detainees at GBDC were provided with art supplies and allowed to participate in art classes. Much of this artwork was transferred from the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center to attorneys representing Guantánamo detainees. Some detainees were permitted to claim some of their art upon their release. In late 2017, however, after a series of successful curated showings of this art across the United States, detainees remaining in Guantánamo were prohibited from transferring their art and denied ownership of their work. After intervention by human rights advocates, including two UN Special Rapporteurs, detainees were granted a limited right to take some of their artwork as deemed by the government as “practicable” upon their release while remaining subject to government claims that the art remains the property of the United States.
Co-Sponsors: UNC Law School, Institute for the Study of the Americas, College of Arts and Sciences, Institute for Arts and Humanities, Art Department, Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies, Center for European Studies, Asian American Center, Beth Jacob/ Healing and Recovery after Trauma, Department of History, Department of Communications, Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, Department of Women & Gender Studies, NC Stop Torture Now, Sociology Department, Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, and the Department of Romance Studies.
South-South Migration: Cross-Border Dynamics and Education in Costa Rica
Speaker: Dr. Ana Solano-Campos
Date: November 7, 2023 Time: 6:00 PM
In this lecture, Dr. Solano-Campos discusses Costa Rica’s profile as a top migrant-receiving country in Central America. In particular, the lecture addresses Nicaragua-Costa Rica cross-border dynamics, one of the most important South-South migration flows in the Central American region. After describing the historical context and shared bond between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Dr. Solano-Campos turns to Costa Rica’s broad legal immigration framework and its implications for education policy, curriculum, and practices. Drawing from a critical year-long ethnography, Dr. Solano-Campos illustrates processes of migrant incorporation in a Costa Rican school.
