Fall 2023
Sep 21 | Marisol de la Cadena
Marisol de la Cadena is an anthropologist working through what she calls “ontological openings,” interested in ethnographic concepts – those that blur the distinction between theory and the empirical because they are not without the latter.
Nov 9 | Maylei Blackwell
Scales of Resistance: Indigenous Women’s Transborder Activism
Maylei Blackwell’s book, Scales of Resistance: Indigenous Women’s Transborder Activism (Duke 2023), draws on twenty-five years of research accompanying indigenous women’s organizing in Mexico and its diaspora and over 70 oral histories. She is the author of the landmark ¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement (University of Texas, 2011) as well as a co-editor of ¡Chicana Movidas! New Narratives of Activism and Feminism in the Movement Era (University of Texas, 2018). She is the co-editor of the Critical Latinx Indigeneities special issue of Latino Studies and has organized the working group of the same name. She is a Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles where she is affiliated in LGBT Studies. She co-created and co-directed the digital story platform Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles (mila.ssc.ucla.edu). Maylei is currently working on rematriating historical memory and seeding Indigenous social movements through the Mobile Indigenous Community Archive (MICA) in collaboration with Indigenous social movements.
Spring 2024
Jan 25 | André Nicolitt
André Nicolitt is a Judge of the Court of Justice of the State of Rio de Janeiro and professor of Criminal Procedure at Fluminense Federal University in Brazil. Dr. Nicolitt obtained his PhD in Law at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa – Lisboa.
Feb 8 | Yina Jimenez Suriel
Yina Jiménez Suriel is a curator and researcher with a master’s degree in visual studies. Associate editor of the magazine Contemporary & Latin America and the Caribbean. She’s curator at large of the Caribbean Art Initiative.
Mar TBA | Moira Millán
Moira Millán is an award-winning Mapuche author, screenwriter and activist from Argentina. She is a Weychafe (guardian, defender, warrior) in the Mapuche tradition and a leader in the movement to recover her people’s ancestral lands and the founder of the Movement of Indigenous Women for “Buen Vivir,” which advocates a way of life in harmony with nature.
Fall 2023
Oct 5 | Laura J. Enriquez
Children of the Revolution: Violence, Inequality and Hope in Nicaraguan Migration
Laura J. Enríquez is Associate Chair, Director of Undergraduate Studies, and Professor in the UC Berkeley Sociology Department. Enríquez’s current project explores what happens when Latin Americans – most especially women – find themselves unable to improve their own and their family’s prospects in their home country.
Spring 2024
Feb 1 | Margaret Chowning
Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750-1940
Margaret Chowning is Professor and Sonne Chair in Latin American History in the History Department at UC Berkeley. Her research interests are Mexico, the late colonial period and nineteenth century, Women, Church, and Social and Economic History in Latin America.
TBA | Juana María Rodríguez
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.
*Presented by the Social Studies Matrix.
TBA | Lev Michael
Lev Michael is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the interplay of language structure and social activity, and explores the ways that social, political, and cultural processes both shape, and are shaped by, the structural dimensions of language.
CLACS Working Groups*
Language Revitalization
The Language Revitalization Working Group (LRWG), co-hosted by the Linguistics and Ethnic Studies departments, focuses on discussing theories, methodologies, and applications of language revitalization (LR) in a variety of world contexts.
Group Leaders:
Tzintia Araceli Montaño Ramírez, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Linguistics, UC Berkeley.
Måsi Santos, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Linguistics, UC Berkeley.
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.
Group Leaders:
Maria Villalpando Paez, Ph.D. Candidate, Energy and Resources Program, UC Berkeley.
Jesús Alejandro García A., Ph.D. Candidate, ESPM, UC Berkeley.
Andrés Caicedo, Ph.D. Student, ESPM, UC Berkeley.
Sebastián Rubiano, Ph.D. Student, ESPM, UC Berkeley.
*Click here for more information on CLACS Working Group Grants
CLACS Co-Sponsored Event Series*
Latin America Media
Oct 16 | Martina Broner
Martina Broner, Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Dartmouth College.
Mar 4 | Paloma Duong
Paloma Duong, Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This series is cosponsored by the Berkeley Center for New Media.
Fotos Desaparecidas: Disparate Memories of the Peruvian Internal Armed Conflict
On the 20th anniversary of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report, this event series focuses on the legacies of photographic archives documenting the country’s internal armed conflict (1980-2000).
According to the Final Report, of the nearly 70,000 people killed, 75% were Indigenous (the majority Quechua), and 40% were from the Andean region of Ayacucho. This series puts Quechua-speaking photographers from Ayacucho in dialogue with other artists, curators, and academics to discuss disparate memories of the internal armed conflict in the context of Peru’s current political crisis. The series consists of virtual conversations and hybrid exhibitions of photographs from the epicenter of the conflict that have never before been published.
This series is organized by Emily Fjaellen Thompson, Ph.D. Candidate, Sociocultural Anthropology, UC Berkeley.
Sep 28 | Conversatorio I: Carlos Valer Delgado y Jaime Urrutia Ceruti
Oct 17 | Conversatorio II: Edilberto Oré Cárdenas y Juan Mendoza Montesinos
*Click here for more information on the CLACS Co-Sponsored Event Series Grants