Fall 2024
Oct 7-8 | Lina Meruane
LECTURE: Chilestineans: Migration, Assimilation, and the identity quest of the Palestinian diaspora
SEMINAR: Escrituras del Ojo
Presented in collaboration with the Arts Research Center
Lina Meruane is a writer and scholar who has won many literary prizes, such as Calamo (Spain, 2015), Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Novel Prize (México 2012), and Anna Seghers (Germany 2011), and received writing grants from the Guggenheim Foundation (US 2004), the National Endowment for the Arts (US 2010), and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin (Germany 2017). Her most recent novel, Nervous System (Sistema Nervioso) was translated into ten languages. In 2022, she published an anthology of essays written between 1998 and 2021 entitled Ensayo General. She taught Latin American Cultures and Creative Writing at New York University for several years and is now splitting her time between Spain and Chile. She received the prestigious Premio Iberoamericano de Letras José Donoso in 2023.
Nov 7 | Irene Small
The Organic Line. Toward a Topology of Modernism
Presented in collaboration with the Department of History of Art
Irene Small will be in conversation with Anneka Lenssen (History of Art) and Natalia Brizuela (Spanish & Portuguese and Film & Media).
Taking as its point of departure the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s notion of the “organic line,” a line of space that appears between a painting and its frame, a door and its lintel, or tiles on the floor, art historian and theorist Irene Small tracks the emergence of the concept in Clark’s work circa 1954. But it also comprehends the organic line as a generative conceptual tool, one that does expansive aesthetic, epistemological, and political work well beyond Clark’s immediate context. Mobilizing a rich repertoire of archival sources and moving across multiple chronologies, geographies, and disciplines, Irene Small's work is an invitation to envision modernism, not as a stable construct defined by centers and peripheries, inclusions and exclusions, but as a topological field of interactive, destabilizing tensions.
Nov 14-15 | Lisa Blackmore
LECTURE: How to eat a river?
SEMINAR: more info coming soon!
Presented in collaboration with the Arts Research Center
Lisa Blackmore's research focuses on human relations to the environment, and connections between politics, art and architecturem, in Latin America and the Caribbean. Blackmore is profesor at the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex, where she is currently Director of Global Studies and Director of the MA in Environment, Society and Culture.
Spring 2025
Ene 23-25 | El Archivo y sus formas en las Américas
Presentado en colaboración con el Arts Research Center
Organizado por Adriana Amante (Universidad de Buenos Aires) y Daylet Dominguez (UC Berkeley).
A partir de las últimas décadas, una eclosión de intervenciones críticas desde múltiples campos ha enfatizado la vuelta al archivo como uno de los ejes clave desde donde se piensan, leen y discuten problemáticas centrales de la cultura y la historia de las Américas. Sin embargo, los estudios sobre el siglo XIX han estado siempre anclados y en conversación con el archivo.
Este conjunto de conferencias busca reflexionar sobre la manera en que los estudios decimonónicos se han posicionado alrededor de la noción de archivo, no solo como un ámbito desde el cual desentrañar la posible tensión entre pasado y presente, sino también como un espacio atravesado por dimensiones materiales, mandatos institucionales y programas de políticas públicas. En ese sentido, se propone generar una discusión metodológica y teórica en torno a la categoría misma de archivo y de nociones o entidades asociadas, tales como inventario, catálogo, colección, patrimonio, museo, biblioteca: ¿qué pasa con las prácticas culturales, literarias e historiográficas que escapan a la lógica totalizadora y homogeneizadora del Estado nación y de la escritura? ¿Es posible intervenir el archivo desde el arte y la ficción? El giro hacia el archivo que domina las intervenciones más recientes nos insta a reposicionar el siglo XIX como punto de partida para muchos de los debates que se suscitan actualmente en el campo intelectual, artístico y crítico a lo largo de las Américas.
Mar 13-14 | Maristella Svampa
Presented in collaboration with the Socionatures Working Group
Maristella Svampa is a researcher, sociologist, activist, and writer. She is a Researcher at the Conicet (National Center for Scientific and Technical Research), Argentina, and Professor at the Universidad Nacional de la Plata (province of Buenos Aires). Her fields of research are Political Ecology, Social Theory, and Political Sociology. She researches about Socio-ecological Crisis, Socio-environmental Conflicts and Resistance in Latin America, Neo-extractivism, and the challenges of the Eco-social Transition, from the South. She received the Guggenheim Fellowship (2007) and the Kónex award in Sociology, and Political Essays (Argentina) in 2006 and 2016, and the Platinum Kónex Award in Sociology (2016). In 2018, she received the National Award in Sociology in Argentina.
Fall 2024
Sep 16 | Juana María Rodríguez
Presented in collaboration with the Social Studies Matrix
Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex
Juana María Rodríguez is Professor of Ethnic Studies and Core faculty in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on racialized sexuality and gender; queer of color theory and activism; affect and aesthetics; technology and media arts; law and critical race theory; and Latinx and Caribbean literatures and cultures.
Oct 10 | Pablo Gonzalez
Digna Rabia: A Digital Journal in Chicana/o/x Studies
Pablo Gonzalez is a Continuing Lecturer in the Chicana/o Studies Program and Ethnic Studies. In 2022, he received the Distinguished Teaching Award. Gonzalez is the Co-Director of the Graduate Fellows Program at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. He is also a researcher at the Latinx Research Center and an affiliate faculty member at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI).
Spring 2025
More info soon!
CLACS Working Groups
Pensamento Racial Brasileiro
The Brazilian Racial Thought Working Group aims to support graduate students across academic disciplines at UC Berkeley, as well as scholars at other institutions, theorizing the racial formation of Brazil in relation to the Americas. The working group will support scholars and students across academic disciplines to build expertise on the literature on race relations in Brazil, with a particular emphasis on the work of Afro-Brazilian feminist scholars such as Beatriz Nascimento, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Lélia Gonzalez, Sueli Carneiro, and Leda Maria Martins. Alongside written theory, the working group also studies Brazilian cultural productions that theorize race and processes of race-making in Brazil. The working group meets biweekly at CLACS and is open to new members.
Latin American and Caribbean Socionatures
The Latin American and Caribbean Socionatures Working Group is an interdisciplinary community organized around the exploration of the histories, dynamics, and conflicts surrounding the co-constitution of nature-society across Latin America and its fluid boundaries.
Berkeley Latin American and Caribbean History
The mission of the Berkeley Latin American and Caribbean History Working Group (BLACH) is to provide a platform for the workshopping, diffusion, and continued professionalization of Latin American and Caribbean history.
CLACS Co-Sponsored Event Series
Caribbean Futures
The four-part event series seeks to transform the dialogue from mere survival of the latest Caribbean crises to a vibrant exploration of the question, “What are Caribbean futures?” Featuring discussions, a workshop, and a symposium with esteemed scholars, this series aims to emphasize life beyond extractivism within the Caribbean context through critical engagements on race, climate change, art, and more.
This series is organized by:
Adriana Gonzales, Ph.D. Student, Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.
Anna Palmer, Ph.D. Student, Sociology, UC Berkeley.
J’Anna Lue, Ph.D. Student, Civil and Enviromental Engineering, UC Berkeley.
Alexandre Georges, Ph.D. Candidate, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley.
Jimena Perez, Ph.D. Student, Geography, UC Berkeley.
*Click here for more information on the CLACS Co-Sponsored Event Series Grants
Sep 18 |Oneka LaBennett
Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond
Sep 25 |Caribbean Coalition at Berkeley
Nov 13 | Ryan Jobson
The Petro-state Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty, and Power in Trinidad and Tobago