Lecture

Dr. Silvio Almeida is a Tinker Visiting Professor at Columbia University's Institute of Latin American Studies. He holds a PhD from the University of São Paulo School of Law and is founder and president of the Luiz Gama Institute, which provides legal advice and citizenship training to vulnerable populations in Brazil. He is the author of Structural Racism (São Paulo, 2018), Sartre: Law and Politics (São Paulo, 2016), and many other publications.

Barbara Weinstein is the Silver Professor of History at New York University and Past President of the American Historical Association. Her publications include The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850-1920 (1983), For Social Peace in Brazil: Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in São Paulo (1996), and The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil (2015). Her research has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

This talk focuses on three imaginary writers invented by Borges: Pierre Menard, Herbert Quain and Mir Bahadur Alí, on how the invention of these authors, and the imagining of their literary production, as a way for Borges to invent himself as a new kind of writer in the 1940s, and to reimagine literary history.

Dr. Joseph-Masséna will present excerpts from her book manuscript Voicing Vodou: Haitian Women Writers and the Goddess Ezili. Her project highlights a previously unidentified literary genre created by three Haitian women writers which she calls “The Eziliphonic text.

This is a hybrid event. Please indicate how you plan to attend (in-person or remotely.)

Join the Center for Latin American Studies for a talk by Claudio Fabian Szlafsztein, PhD on climate change in the Amazonian region. Dr. Szlafsztein is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and a full Professor at at the Center of Amazonian Advanced Studies (NAEA) of the Federal University of Pará (UFPA).

The “What’s in a Name?” series aims to open a doorway to explore issues that affect us every day, and that, ultimately, reverberate through the most intimate aspects of who we are. While we will explore basic tools and name etiquette, with the kindness and respect we all deserve, we intend to reflect about what our names say about us, and how they may be used to define who we are.

He will discuss the role racism has played in shaping U.S. Foreign policy toward Haiti, as well as the solidarity expressed by Haiti toward other Latin American countries (the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivar, and Mexico) to achieve their independences.

Barbara Weinstein is the Silver Professor of History at New York University and Past President of the American Historical Association. Her publications include The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850-1920 (1983), For Social Peace in Brazil: Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in São Paulo (1996), and The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil (2015). Her research has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

The “What’s in a Name?” series aims to open a doorway to explore issues that affect us every day, and that, ultimately, reverberate through the most intimate aspects of who we are. While we will explore basic tools and name etiquette, with the kindness and respect we all deserve, we intend to reflect about what our names say about us, and how they may be used to define who we are.

The discussion will be based on the articles "Contesting Autocracy: Repression and Opposition Coordination in Venezuela" by Maryhen Jiménez (University of Oxford) and "Opposition at the Margins: Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy in Colombia and Venezuela" by Laura Gamboa (University of Utah). The conversation will be moderated by Raúl Sánchez Urribarrí (La Trobe University).

The presentation will be in Spanish.