“Nobodies” in the State: The Black Geographies of Francia Márquez’s Election

Speaker: Eloisa Berman Arévalo

Date: February 17, 2023
Time: 3:30 PM
Address: Carolina Hall (Room 220)

Eloisa Berman Arévalo, Professor of History and Social Sciences at la Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia, joins the UNC-CH Department of Geography and the Institute for the Study of the Americas for a discussion about the electoral success and political career of Afro-Colombian environmental and human rights activist Francia Márquez Mina. Professor Arévalo will draw from previous research on black geographies in Colombia, her personal involvement in Fracia’s campaign, and her current experience in the government’s rural development agency to reflect on the possibilities, limitations, and dangers of Colombia’s shifting political norms.

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Eloisa Berman-Arévalo is Assistant Professor at the Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia, and an advisor at the Rural Development Agency in Colombia. Her research lies at the intersection between agrarian studies, political ecology, and black geographies in Latin America. With an emphasis on historic afro-descendant territories in the Colombian Caribbean, she explores post-conflict agrarian capitalism and its racialized and gendered forms of deterritorialization. She engages these topics through an ethnographic lens informed by feminist methodologies and praxis. Eloisa is also an activist and collaborator in anti-racist, peasants-rights, and feminist collectives in Colombia.

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Click the “Read More” button below to view this page on the Department of Geography website.

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Mental Health Considerations of Type 2 Diabetes Management in the Dominican Republic

Speaker: Deshira Wallace

Date: March 1, 2023
Time: 6:00 PM
Address: Room 1005, Global Education Center

Join Deshira Wallace, Assistant Professor at UNC Gillings School of Public Health, for her lecture on the mental health considerations of type 2 diabetes care and management in the Dominican Republic.

Dr. Deshira Wallace is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research is focused on examining the effects of structural and psychosocial stressors on cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes prevention and management among US Latines and in Latin America. Further, she uses an intersectionality framework to examine risk factors, coping behaviors, and chronic health outcomes, particularly among Latines and Latin Americans of African descent in an aim to further unpack health inequities within the Latine and Latin American population.

She works at the intersection of health sciences, social sciences, and the humanities to not only highlight health disparities, but to also critically examine how these disparities and inequities came about.

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This event counts as a Campus Life Experience.

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North Carolina Conference on Latin American Studies : The Many Places of Latin America

Speaker: Various Speakers

Date: February 17, 2023 – February 18, 2023
Time: Times Vary
Address: John Hope Franklin Center (2204 Erwin Road) & Trent Drive Hall (310 Trent Drive) in Durham

The Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University and the Latin American Studies Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte are pleased to announce the fourth annual North Carolina Conference on Latin American Studies (NC/CLAS). NC/CLAS 2023 will be an in-person event hosted by Duke University on February 17-18, 2023, and will be dedicated to the theme “The Many Places of Latin America.”

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The registration deadline for this event is February 3rd, 2023. Pre-registration is required for all attendees, including presenters.

The complete conference program and registration form can be accessed by clicking the “Read More” button below.

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Historical Memory of Refugees from El Salvador

Speaker: Molly Todd

Date: February 8, 2023
Time: 6:00 PM
Address: Nelson Mandela Auditorium, Global Education Center

Join Molly Todd, National Humanities Center Fellow for her presentation on her memory work with refugees from El Salvador.

Molly Todd is a historian specializing in cold war-era Central America, refugee experiences, historical memory, and transnational human rights and solidarity movements. Her publications include two El Salvador-focused monographs, listed below; the textbook Undergraduate Research in History: A Guide for Students (2022); and multiple book chapters and articles. Her research has been supported by a Public Engagement Fellowship from the Whiting Foundation for the Humanities, as well as Fulbright and Mellon-Sawyer fellowships. Todd is associate professor at Montana State University, where she coordinates the Public History Lab and teaches courses on Latin American history and historical methods.

While in residence at the National Humanities Center, Todd will advance her book project on “pictures of conscience”—embroideries, drawings, photographs, and other art from Salvadoran refugee camps. Based on a remarkable private archive and oral history interviews, this study reveals the dynamics of grassroots cultural production in “stateless” spaces and the important work that art does in global human rights networks.

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This event counts as a Campus Life Experience.

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Migrating North: Perspectives from Indigenous Guatemala | Migración hacia el Norte: una mirada desde Guatemala Indígena

Speaker: Emily Taylor and Julisa García

Date: February 22, 2023
Time: 6:00 PM
Address: Virtual

Join Emily Taylor, UNC History Ph.D. Candidate, and Julisa García with Promotores de la Liberación Migrante for a conversation on the Promotores work on Maya language translation for migrants in the U.S. immigration system.

The event will be in English and Spanish, interpretation will be available.

To register for the event, please click the “Read More” button below.

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Resilience in Francophone Caribbean Literature: Patrick Chamoiseau’s Creole Folktales

Speaker: Dorothea Heitsch

Date: November 17, 2022
Time: 6:00PM

The area studies centers at UNC and Duke partner with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to offer globally-focused professional development during International Education Week. International Education Week, held in November annually, is a national week of the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Education that celebrates the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide.
Participants will receive a certificate for 1.5 PD hours for each event attended.

Hosted by UNC’s Center for European Studies
This workshop examines the social, political, and historical issues present in Francophone Caribbean writing through the example of Patrick Chamoiseau’s Creole Folktales. We will examine text and context in a variety of activities around questions of space, race, trauma, or identity. We will also keep in mind how historical repercussions of French colonialism might usefully be brought to current discussions in the United States.

For this workshop, we encourage everyone to read two short stories before attending: Patrick Chamoiseau’s “The Rainmaker” and Wendy Walters’ “Lonely in America.” Though this is encouraged, all are welcome to attend regardless of whether not they have read the stories beforehand!

Dorothea Heitsch is Teaching Professor in French & Francophone Studies in UNC’s Department of Romance Studies. She teaches a wide variety of courses ranging from French language to content courses at all levels in French and English. Her research focuses on literature’s intersection with other fields, such as medicine, religion, philosophy, feminism(s), alchemy, or the history of the book. She currently works on early modern interreligious dialogue and examines the worth that discussions across the faiths may have held for fifteenth- to seventeenth-century readers and writers within and beyond Europe.

Learn more and register for the event at the “Read More” button below.

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A Ruth Conniff Lecture on Milked (2022)

Speaker: Ruth Conniff

Date: October 12, 2022
Time: 1:00pm – 2:30pm

Join veteran journalist Ruth Conniff and the students of UNC’s GLBL 703: Global Migration graduate seminar for a presentation and Q&A discussion of Conniff’s new book, Milked: How an American Crisis Brought Together Midwestern Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers.

This classroom visit is generously sponsored by UNC’s Institute for the Study of the Americas and the UNC Latina/o Studies Program. The Latin Americanist and Latina/o Studies community at large is welcome to participate, and everyone is encouraged to read the book prior to the event. Please RSVP by October 7, 2022 to indicate your interest in attending. You will receive a confirmation email by October 9th, 2022 with further information.

Questions should be directed to Dr. Angela Stuesse (astuesse@unc.edu).

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A compelling portrayal by the veteran journalist of the lives of farming communities on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border and the surprising connections between them.

“Conniff brings her skills and insights to a particularly urgent project: moving beyond the polarizing politics of our current era, and taking a deeper look at how people who have been pitted against each other can forge bonds of understanding.” —E.J. Dionne Jr., co-author of 100% Democracy

Winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Award.

In the Midwest, Mexican workers have become critically important to the survival of rural areas and small towns—and to the individual farmers who rely on their work—with undocumented immigrants, mostly from Mexico, accounting for an estimated 80 percent of employees on the dairy farms of western Wisconsin.

In Milked, former editor-in-chief of The Progressive Ruth Conniff introduces us to the migrants who worked on these dairy farms, their employers, among them white voters who helped elect Donald Trump to office in 2016, and the surprising friendships that have formed between these two groups of people. These stories offer a rich and fascinating account of how two crises—the record-breaking rate of farm bankruptcies in the Upper Midwest, and the contentious politics around immigration—are changing the landscape of rural America.

A unique and fascinating exploration of rural farming communities, Milked sheds light on seismic shifts in policy on both sides of the border over recent decades, connecting issues of labor, immigration, race, food, economics, and U.S.-Mexico relations and revealing how two seemingly disparate groups of people have come to rely on each other, how they are subject to the same global economic forces, and how, ultimately, the bridges of understanding that they have built can lead us toward a more constructive politics and a better world.

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Ruth Conniff is the editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner and editor-at-large and former editor-in-chief of The Progressive magazine. She has appeared on Good Morning America, C-SPAN, and NPR and has been a frequent guest on All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC. Milked: How an American Crisis Brought Together Midwestern Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers (The New Press) is her first book. Conniff lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Black Activism and the Cuban Revolution Zoom Visiting Lecture

Speaker: Dr. Devyn Spence Benson

Date: October 13, 2022
Time: 12:30pm
Address: Virtual

Join Professor Maya Berry’s Race, Gender & Activism course on October 13th at 12:30pm with a special guest lecture from history professor Dr. Devyn Spence Benson from the University of Kentucky.

Dr. Devyn Spence Benson is a 20th century historian who focuses on antiracist movements across the Americas and the Caribbean. Her research and teaching interests sit at the intersection of Africana Studies and Latin American history, and she have worked throughout her career to merge these two interdisciplinary fields by focusing on Afro-Cuban history, politics, and culture. Benson has taught at Williams College, Louisiana State University, Davidson College and now the University of Kentucky. She is the author of published articles and reviews in the Hispanic American Historical Review, Journal of Transnational American Studies, Cuban Studies, World Policy Journal, and PALARA: Publication of the Afro-Latin / American Research Association. Benson’s work has been supported by the Doris G. Quinn, Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS), and Gaius Charles Bolin dissertation fellowships. She has also held residencies at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and the WEB DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University.

Join the virtual presentation here.
Meeting ID: 986 1794 6807
Passcode: 949810

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Student Action with Farmworkers Presentation

Date: September 23, 2022
Time: 3:00pm-4:00pm
Address: Toy Lounge, 4th floor of Dey Hall

Join us on Friday, September 23rd for a presentation by Student Action with Farmworkers, generously sponsored by the UNC Romance Studies Department and the Institute for the Study of the Americas.

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Student Action with Farmworkers is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to bring students and farmworkers together to learn about each other’s lives, share resources and skills, improve conditions for farmworkers, and build diverse coalitions working for social change.

SAF works with farmworkers, students, and advocates in the Southeast and nationwide to create a more just agricultural system. Since 1992, we have engaged thousands of students, farmworker youth, and community members in the farmworker movement.

For more information, please visit the SAF website.

Questions? Please contact Heather Knorr at knorrh@email.unc.edu.

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Seminar: Climate Finance & Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean

Speaker: Dr. Sandra Guzmán Luna

Date: September 21, 2022
Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm
Address: Virtual

As a part of the Nicholas School of the Environment’s Global Week celebration, Duke’s Working Group on Environment in Latin America (WGELA) is co-sponsoring a seminar with Dr. Sandra Guzmán Luna about climate finance and policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Global Week is a series of speaker events featuring environmental professionals from different parts of the world and capped of with a Global Fest and potluck featuring our various cultures.

Dr. Sandra Guzmán Luna is the founder of the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC). With over 16 years of experience, she has managed climate finance at the Climate Policy Initiative, consulted for the UNFCCC, and was the former General Director of Climate Change Policies at the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources of Mexico.

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To register for this and other Global Week events, please click the “Read More” button below!

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