Latin American & Caribbean Studies

International Institute, University of Michigan

LACS Events - Fall 2003

Friday, September 19, 1:00pm, School of Social Work bldg Educational Conference Center (1st floor):
A presentation by Peter Kornbluh
Kissinger and Pinochet: The Advent of Human Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy
Peter Kornbluh will share the findings of his new book, The Pinochet file: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, as they relate to U.S. foreign policy following the coup in Chile thirty years ago. Drawing on declassified records, he will discuss how secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s support for the Pinochet regime, despite its atrocities, became the catalyst for the first internal and public debate over human rights as a legal and moral criteria in U. S. foreign policy.

Event cosponsored by LACS and the Residential College.

Monday, September 22, 3:00- 4:00pm, International Institute, SSW bldg. Room 1636:
Art Around the World Session #1: Women Artists at the DIA
Brought to you by the International Institute Area Studies Centers and the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Free and open to the public. Please join us.

Thursday and Saturday, September 25 and 27, 8:00PM, Media Union Video Room, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd:
Dance Concert: A Tribute to Paco
Choreographed by Sandra Torijano. A Tribute to Paco is a posthumous tribute to the preeminent Costa Rican painter Francisco Amighetti and will be danced by eight UM Dance Department students. Music composed by Costa Rican composer Eddie Mora, and set design by Eduardo Torijano, an award winning Costa Rican muralist and set designer. Event cosponsored by LACS.

Friday, October 3, from 5:00-8:30pm, room 1636 and the Gallery of the International Institute, 1080 South University:
Conversation about Latin American Studies with New Faculty at 5pm

Alexandra M. Stern (Center for the History of Medicine and American Culture)
Gareth Williams (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Maria Carmen Lemos (School of Natural Resources & Environment)
Richard Turits (CAAS and History)
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes (Romance Languages and Literatures and American Culture)

Join us in welcoming some of our new LACS faculty. Panelists will address the following:

1. What are the fundamental question or questions that emerge from your research?

2. What are the critical issues facing area studies, and in particular
"Latin American and Caribbean studies," at this global university at the present time?

LACS Party

Please join us to welcome LACS new and old faculty and students, as well as our new director Fernando Coronil at our annual party following the Conversation About Latin American Studies. Latin American music, food and drink will be provided. 6:30-8:30pm.

Monday, October 20, from 10:10am-11:10am and 11:20am-12:20pm (two identical sessions), at the Michigan center High school in Jackson:
Outreach Workshop:Cultures and Controversial Issues

International Institute personel will facilitate discussion and provide real world perspective surrounding ideas and lessons for teaching about cultures and related issues. Enrich your ideas in understanding the uniqueness of other cultures to help students view "different" as a positive thing. Learn from other cultures how to enrich our own lives and promote world cooperation.

Each center representative will provide a brief presentation at each session, from 10:10am-11:10am and 11:20am-12:20pm (two identical sessions). Maria Gonzalez (Romance Languages and Literature) will represent LACS. Lunch after the second session.

Monday and Tuesday, October 20 and 21:
Movie Screening and LACS Bate papo Series with Brazilian Filmmaker Eunice Gutman
In collaboration with the Atlantic Studies Initiative LACS will host a visit to UM by Brazilian filmmaker Eunice Gutman in October, with a screening and q&a of a selection of her films (So No Carnaval/Only in Carnaval; Amores de Rua/Street Lovers; Segredos de Amor/Love's Secrets; O outro lado do Amor/The other Side of Love) on Monday, October 20, 6-8:30 p.m. (140 Lorch Hall) and a Bate Papo presentation on October 21, 1:00-2:00pm, at the International Institute, in room 2609. Since 1976, Gutman has directed a series of short and medium-length documentaries on women’s issues, Brazilian artists, popular culture, religion, and grass-roots organization in poor neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro. A longtime advocate for human rights and women’s rights in Brazil, Eunice is the most prominent feminist documentarian in Brazil, having chronicled the representation of women delegates to the Constitutional assembly at the end of the military dictatorship in the mid-eighties. She is also the first documentary filmmaker to probe political and social debates related to women’s sexuality through her intimate portraits of prostitutes and lesbians in Rio de Janeiro. The Bate Papo series is a series of informal conversations in Portuguese.

Monday, October 27, 3:00- 4:00pm, International Institute, SSW bldg. Room 1636:
Art Around the World Session #2: The power of Myth
A talk by Dan Piesko

Brought to you by the International Institute Area Studies Centers and the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Free and open to the public. Please join us.

Tuesday, October 28 from 12noon-1pm, International institute, room 2609:
LACS brown bag talk by Paulina Alberto

This presentation will explore the early work, from the 1940s and 1950s, of French-born photographer Pierre Verger, whose research on ties between Africa and its diaspora led him to become a "messenger" among political and spiritual leaders in Bahia (Brazil) and West Africa. The talk will address how Verger's narratives and images of African-Brazilian connections, marginal at first, moved to the centers of Brazilian public life by the early 1960s.

Friday, October 31, 12-2pm, International institute, room 2609:
LACS ROUNDTABLE - The Written Space and the Lettered City: Reading the Graphical Space of a Document, with Jean Hebrard and Kathryn Burns
This roundtable discussion will address the questions of who has the right to produce writing and how writing itself affects the lives of ordinary people. Jean Hebrard (professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Inspecteur Générale de l’Education Nationale at the Ministry of Education in Paris) will discuss notarial, baptismal, and census documents from Bahia, Brazil. Kathryn Burns(History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) will discuss notarial documents from Cuzco, Peru.

Monday, November 3, 4:00pm, International Institute, room 1636:
Video showing and lecture by Marjorie Agosín
LACS is pleased to have Chilean activist and writer Marjorie Agosín back for another visit this fall. She will show the documentary THREADS OF HOPE and speak about her work in Chile. Professor Agosín is a distinguished Chilean-American writer of fiction, a poet, a scholar, and a human rights activist. Her human rights work has been recognized by a United Nations award, and she is a recipient of Chile's Gabriela Mistral award.

Tuesday, November 4, from 12noon-1:00pm, International Institute, room 2609:
LACS bate papo series by Maria Carmen Lemos

Friday, November 14, from 4:00-6:00pm, International Institute, room 1636:
LACS Visiting Reasearcher talk with TONEL

A Self-portrait as an Organic Intellectual: Notes on Art Made in Havana

Antonio Eligio Fernández, known as Tonel, has worked in many media as a visual artist in Cuba since the 1970s. In his talk, he will discuss his work and will illustrate it with examples of his book and magazine illustrations, paintings, drawings, artist's books, sculptures and installation art.

Wednesday, December 3, from 12 noon- 1:30pm, International institute, room 1644:
Roundtable on Venezuela

Will Venezuelan Voters Oust Chavez?

Come to a discussion on recent events in Venezuela featuring José Molina (Visiting Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan; Professor of Political Science, University of Zulia), Daniel Levine (Professor and Chair of Political Science), and Sharon Lean (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California, Irvine). The event will be moderated by LACS director Fernando Coronil, (Professor of Anthropology), also an expert on Venezuela.

Special Events

Special events for the academic year will include a return performance by Brazilian composer Caetano Veloso on April 24, 2004. He will play at the newly renovated Hill Auditorium at 8 pm. Sponsored by the University Musical Society.

For more information on events as they draw nearer call LACS at 763-0553
or e-mail at lacs@umich.edu