Event Description
Verena Baier’s Ph.D. project investigates memories of people from the U.S. who participated in the Nicaraguan conflicts of the 1980s, when the Reagan administration’s oppos¬¬ition to Sandinista Nicaragua and support of the Nicaraguan counterrevolution ignited direct action in different camps of U.S. society during the late Cold War. Verena examines not only the life writings of U.S. activists within the leftist peace and solidarity movement, but also looks at non-state actors such as mercenaries on the political right who supported the Nicaraguan contras.
The project explores how life writings play a role within and are constituted by social movements of the U.S. Left and the paramilitary subcultures in the context of the emerging New Right; that is, how the respective movements write their own stories, and how they remember themselves. The study also investigates the different debates on and memories of Nicaragua, and connects them to larger traditions of transnational solidarity, as well as processes of imperialism.
Speaker
Verena Baier is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the University of Regensburg, Germany, where she manages a humanities graduate research group and is supported by a full Ph.D. scholarship of the Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft (sdw). Previously, she studied English, Spanish, and American Studies at Augustana College, IL, the University of Seville, Spain, and the University of Regensburg, Germany. Her research interests include life writing studies, memory studies, Latin American history and culture, transnational American Studies, and social movements. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS).