TransAmericas Research Workshop
- Faculty Coordinators: Dalia Muller (History) and Camilo Trumper (Transnational Studies)
The TransAmericas Research Group engages scholars and students from a range of departments around issues and topics spanning the Americas with the intent to establish connections between faculty and graduate students interested in both Latin American and Caribbean studies south of the border as well as the experiences of Latino/a and Caribbean peoples in North America. Members complement this broad thematic vision with a transnational approach that characterizes cutting edge research in the field of Latin/American studies.
TransAmericas Research Workshop 2011-2012
Faculty Coordinators
- Dalia Muller (Department of History)
- Camilo Trumper (Department of American Studies)
About the Workshop
The TransAmericas Research Group engages scholars and students from a range of departments around issues and topics spanning the Americas with the intent to establish connections between faculty and graduate students interested in both Latin American and Caribbean studies south of the border as well as the experiences of Latino/a and Caribbean peoples in North America. Members complement this broad thematic vision with a transnational approach that characterizes cutting edge research in the field of Latin/American studies. We will meet monthly in the Fall semester to examine key texts as well as works-in-progress among UB Faculty. Building upon this collaborative project, we will invite and a series of scholars who are shaping the direction of the emergent field to present forthcoming research.
2011-2012 Events
Friday, November 4, 3:30PM
Location: 830 Clemens Hall
Speaker: Ronald Rael, Architecture, UC Berkeley
“Border Wall as Architecture: A Proactive Manifesto for the U.S./Mexico Barrier”
By some measures, the U.S. Secure Fence Act of 2006 funded the single largest and most expensive building project in the United States of the 21st Century. It finances 700 miles of fortification dividing the U.S. from Mexico at the average cost of $4 million dollars per mile. In many locations it is fabricated of steel, wire mesh, concrete, even re-purposed Vietnam-era Airforce landing strips. Elsewhere, it makes use of high-tech surveillance systems—aerostat blimps, heat sensors and subterranean probes. In all cases, the concept of “national security” governs and militates construction and design of the wall, and the success of the wall has been measured in the numbers of intercepted illegal crossings. Border Wall as Architecture suggests that the wall, at such prices, should and could be thought of not only as security, but also as productive infrastructure–as the very backbone of a borderland economy.
Friday, November 11, 1PM
Location: 830 Clemens Hall
Speaker: Rodwyn Fischer, Northwestern University
“The Everyday Life of Social Inequality in Recife, Brazil, 1870-1890
Dr. Fischer will be presenting her newest work, a social history of inequality in Northeastern Brazil. Her paper, entitled “The Everyday Life of Social Inequality in Recife, Brazil, 1870-1890,” is part of a larger project that looks at how Brazilians came to define inequality following the abolition of slavery in the late 19th century. Her presentation combines a study of social geography and criminal court cases to directly address how people understood everyday social difference and inequality in the age of abolition.
Dr. Fischer is the author of the acclaimed A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Stanford, 2008), which won the Social Science History Association’s President’s Book Award, the Conference on Latin American History’s Warren Dean Prize, the Urban History Association’s Best Book Prize (non-North American), and the Brazilian Studies Association’s Roberto Reis Book Prize.
Monday, November 14, 1PM
Location: 830 Clemens Hall
Speaker: Deisi Pereira, Economic Analyst, Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
“Social Change and Regional Integration in Latin America and the Caribbean: Post-Neoliberal Possibilities”
Since 2004, the government of Venezuela has led the formation of a new regional partnership known as ALBA (The Bolivarian Alliance of Our America). To date, ALBA has eight member countries including Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and Venezuela. Rivaling neoliberal claims that “there is no alternative,” the ALBA countries have been working to develop new forms of economic activity that are designed to meet basic needs and to strengthen communities. Please join us for a discussion of this new model of economic cooperation and the associated efforts to forge transnational policies and agreements that strengthen workers, the poor and the overall self-determination and sovereignty of Latin American and Caribbean nations.
Deisi Pereira has worked as an economic analyst with the ALBA Bank in Caracas, and as an economic advisor to the Social Development Bank of Venezuela (BANDES) as well as to the National Formation Program of Cooperatives and Microenterprises of Venezuela. More recently, she was in charge of project planning for the government-owned petroleum company’s (PDVSA) Development Plan for the Caribbean, and currently is first secretary of the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Washington DC.
Past Events
Thursday, November 11, 2010, 1 PM, 330 Student Union- Tony Gleaton (poster for event)
Tuesday, March 1, 2011, 2-4 PM, 830 Clemens, Alicia Partnoy, author of The Little School, will present a reading and conversation of her work.
TITLE: “Rewriting History with our Stories: The Case of Argentina’s Survivors of State Terrorism”
This talk is co-sponsored by the Feminist Research Alliance Research Workshop and the Transamericas Workshop
Tuesday, March 29, 2011, 2-4 PM, 830 Clemens, Ray Craib, Cornell University, Department of History,
TITLE: “The Constant Sentinel: Casimiro Barrios, ‘Foreign Agitators,’ and Deportations in Early 20th-Century Chile”
Call for Members
The TransAmericas Research Workshop, a new Humanities Institute working group, invites scholars and students interested in Latin American, Latina/o and Caribbean studies to our inaugural meeting on, Tuesday, November 30 12-1:30pm, in 1004 Clemens. The TransAmericas group’s mission is to bring together people throughout the University and across disciplines who are interested in a hemispheric approach to Latin American, Latina/o and Caribbean studies. In our first meeting, we will discuss recent works by Jill Lane, Adrian Perez Melgoza and Mary Louise Pratt, who develop innovative perspectives on the critical study of race and gender in the 19th and 20th century. (Readings available upon request at ctrumper@buffalo.edu). In the Spring semester, we will continue our bi-monthly meetings, and host noted scholars of Latin America, Latina/o and Caribbean studies who study the relationship between race, gender and politics from a cross-disciplinary, transnational perspective. Please note that the TransAmericas group is happy to support the Caribbean Cultural Studies Program’s fall speaker, Tony Gleaton, whose prize-winning work as a photographer is eminently inter-American. Mr. Gleaton will be presenting his latest project, “The Black Route West: Manifesting Destiny, 1528-1918,” which he describes as an attempt to “tell the stories of the African diaspora,” in the context of “twin” Spanish and British conquests, and through the juxtaposition of landscape photography and text. Mr. Gleaton will be speaking on Thursday, November 11, at 1pm, in 330 Student Union. Please see the attached flier. Questions? Please contact the group’s coordinators, Camilo Trumper (ctrumper@buffalo.edu) or Dalia Muller (daliamul@buffalo.edu).
