Conferences
CULTURAL COUNTERPOINTS: Examining the Musical Interactions between the U.S. and Latin America: A Conference in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Indiana University Latin American Music Center, October 19-23, 2011
As a celebration of its 50th Anniversary, the Indiana University Latin American Music Center will hold a conference on a broad range of topics addressing historical and current musical exchanges between the U.S. and Latin America. The conference will take place at the Bloomington campus of Indiana University, between October 19th and October 23rd,2011.
The Latin American Music Center at Indiana University was founded in 1961 by Chilean composer and musicologist Juan Orrego-Salas. Because of the LAMC's long history of fostering fruitful exchanges between US and Latin American composers, conductors, scholars, performers, and ensembles, the conference seeks to provide a platform for all relevant disciplines to share research on the theme of musical exchanges between the U.S. and Latin America.Papers submissions are accepted until Wednesday, June 1, 2011. Papers must address the effects and impact of musical exchanges between the US and Latin America. As long as the central issue of cross-cultural impact is engaged, papers can address any historical period and repertoire stream (such art-, urban, popular or traditional music; film and commercial music; etc.), as well as any aspect of the musical phenomenon (such as compositional style, specific works, aesthetics, analysis, documentation, reception, migration, etc.).
For more information about the conference please visit the conference website or contact Marysol Quevedo at marysol.quevedo@gmail.com.
Symposium on Teaching and Learning Indigenous Languages of Latin America (STILLA), October 30 - November 2, 2011
The 2011 Symposium on Teaching and Learning Indigenous Languages of Latin America (STLILLA 2011) will bring together instructors, practitioners, activists, indigenous leaders, scholars and learners of indigenous languages. The symposium will focus on research and pedagogy related to the diverse languages and cultures of indigenous populations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This second symposium will build on the accomplishments of the 2008 Symposium on Teaching Indigenous Languages of Latin America (STILLA), the first initiative of this scope in the world, which resulted in the formation of the Association for Teaching and Learning Indigenous Languages of Latin America (ATLILLA).
Our distinguished keynote speakers are: Demetrio Cojtí Cuxil, Alan Durston, Bruce Mannheim, Camilla Townsend and Sebastiaán van Doesburg.
These symposia aim to engage participants in a hemispheric dialogue and also to serve as a forum for networking and exchanging ideas, experiences and research on pedagogical, methodological, and practical issues from cross-disciplinary perspectives. Active listening and discussion enable professionals from around the world to interact with leading experts in the fields of education, language policy and planning, theoretical linguistics, Latin American studies, applied linguistics, anthropology, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and informatics. Through multiple venues such as keynotes addresses, special panels, interactive workshops, round table discussions, poster sessions, and technological tools showcases, the symposia contribute to the teaching, learning, dissemination, maintenance, and revitalization of indigenous languages and cultures of the region.
STLILLA 2011 will be hosted by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame in collaboration with the partner institutions listed below. The first symposium was hosted by the Minority Languages and Cultures of Latin America Program (MLCP) and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at Indiana University. It is hoped that STLILLA will become a regularly occurring event moving among its partner institutions.
Partners include Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP), Indiana University: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Department of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education, School of Education, The Ohio State University, Center for Latin American Studies, San Diego State University, Center for Latin American Studies, Tulane University, Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida, Center for Latin American Studies, University of Notre Dame: Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Center for Latin American Studies, University of Wisconsin, Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program, Vanderbilt University, Center for Latin American Studies.
Minority Languages and Cultures Program (MLCP) Spring Institute, May 20-21, 2010
The Minority Languages and Cultures of Latin America Program was pleased to host a Spring Institute on Thursday and Friday, May 20-21, 2010, in Bloomington, Indiana, whose purpose was to bring together colleagues located at colleges and universities around the state of Indiana to share ideas and practices related to doing research on and teaching about marginalized populations in Latin America. The MLCP Spring Institute saw participation from colleagues representing several Indiana institutions of higher education, with panels on “Peoples of Mexico,” “Indigenous Languages of Latin America,” “Africa in the Americas,” and “Teaching Latin America.
The MLCP Spring Institute featured two keynote addresses:
one by Alan Sandstrom, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, IPFW, titled “Pantheism and Sacred Water Mountains: The Cultural Ecology of Contemporary Aztec Religion,” the other by Serafín Coronel-Molina, Language Education, IU (with Viviana Quintero, University of Michigan), titled "Macro and Micro-sociolinguistics of Indigenous Languages in South America."
There was also a showing of scenes from a new documentary, “Slaves of the Saint,” produced by Kelly Hayes, Religious Studies, IUPUI. Here is Prof Hayes’ description of the film:
“It is primarily about afro-brazilian religions and focuses on practitioners' relationships with a set of unruly spirits called exus. There is no narrator, so the film lets the practitioners speak for themselves about practices that have typically been stigmatized as black magic. And since these religions are very heterogeneous and fluid, people have different ways of conceptualizing and interacting with the spirits and so they often say contradictory things.”
There were panel sessions on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, and a Friday afternoon workshop on “Exploring Latin America through Electronic Resources and Music.”
Human Rights, Legal Systems, and Customary Cultures Across the Global South, April 9-10, 2010
At Indiana University, the Maurer School of Law, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the African Studies Program sponsored a cross-disciplinary Symposium on law and language across the global south with a special focus on human rights as the concept is shaped, adapted, rejected, or contested in various locations. In Africa, Latin America, and other locations in the global south, social groups commonly operate with multiple legal systems that generally included an official state system of law and others based on indigenous legal practices, customary law, and Islamic law. The Symposium took place over a day and a half, in plenary format, to allow for ample discussion and exchange.
Challenges and Opportunity in the Global Context: Public Policy in the 21st Century, March 26, 2010
CLACS played an important role in briging Dr. Jamil Mahuad, Former President of Ecuador, to IU during the Spring 2010 Semester. As part of his visit, Dr. Muhuad was the keynote speaker for the 3rd Annual International Public Affairs Association Spring Conference, organized by the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA). His talk, titled “Negotiation and Conflict Resolution in the Peru-Ecuador Border Dispute and Beyond,” was very illustrative in explaining the steps taken towards the solution of the historical border dispute between these two countries, which had already involved armed conflict and, at the time, prospects for an imminent war.
1968 in Latin America: Events, Impacts, Legacies, November 14, 2008
In the week following the music concert, CLACS sponsored the interdisciplinary symposium “1968 in Latin America: Events, Impacts, Legacies,” held on November 14, 2008. Seven presenters from IU and three other institutions engaged in a lively discussion of critical issues of the period. IU Professor of Gender Studies Lessie Jo Frazier and Deborah Cohen from the University of Missouri - St. Louis delivered a joint presentation on the interplay of gender, sexuality, and student politics in Mexico during the 1968 mobilization. Emily Maguire from Northwestern University talked about the representation of gender in the film Memorias del subdesarrollo by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, a classic of revolutionary Cuban cinema. Rock music and counterculture under Salvador Allende’s government in Chile was the subject of Patrick Barr-Melej from Ohio University. IU Rudy Professor of History Jeff Gould discussed the reconfiguration of the Latin American left in 1968 in the context of student activism. Luis A. González examined key cultural, social, and political developments in Latin America and the Caribbean during 1968.
Alfredo Minetti reflected on the music concert “Singing for Social Justice.” As part of his presentation, Alfredo surprised the audience playing “Tragedia de la Plaza de las Tres Culturas,” a poignant theme by Mexican singer-songwriter Judith Reyes on the student massacre at Tlatelolco Square in Mexico City. Though originally included in the music program, this piece was not performed on the night of the concert due to time constraints. Performing the piece this time were Yuriria Rodríguez on voice, IU Professor of Folklore John McDowell on guitar, and Alfredo on accordion. A slideshow of historical images of the Mexican student movement accompanied the impromptu performance of Reyes’ emotive corrido.
First Biannual Symposium on Teaching Indigenous Languages of Latin American (STILLA), August 14-16, 2008
This symposium brought scholars together to dicuss issues related to the teaching of Indigenous Languages and covered issues including, but not limited to:
- Best practices, methodologies and strategies in teaching indigenous languages
- Using multimedia and other multiple resources in language teaching
- The interplay of teaching and research
- Issues of language policy and planning in language teaching
- The importance of indigenous languages learning for fieldwork
- Impact of language attitudes and ideologies on teaching indigenous languages
- Connecting, celebrating and maintaining traditions through teaching
- Assessment and evaluation
- Issues of dialectology and standardization in language instruction
- Technology and indigenous languages
- Distance learning / online courses
- Strengthening indigenous languages as an international subject of studyParticipants and speakers included:
Serafín M. Coronel-Molina School of Education
John H. McDowell, Folklore and Ethnomusicology
Jeff Gould, CLACS
Nora C. England (UT Austin)
Jean-Jacques Decoster (Instituto de Investigación de la Lengua Quechua, Cusco, Peru)
Rethinking Race in the Americas: Anthropology, Politics, and Policy, April 17-18, 2008
This symposium brought to Indiana University an internationally renowned group of scholars from diverse sub-fields within the discipline of anthropology to present their latest research and debate the concept of race, its relation to anthropology, and its relevance to the politics of the present across the Americas. The symposium was organized by Indiana University's Department of Anthropology to celebrate its 60th anniversary of scholarship and teaching.
Speakers included:
Lee Baker (Duke)
Charles Briggs (UC Berkeley)
Jane Hill (University of Arizona)
Jeff Long (University of Michigan Medical School)
Yolanda Moses (UC Riverside)
Deborah Poole (Johns Hopkins)
Ricardo Santos (The National Museum in Brazil)
Laurie Wilkie (UC Berkeley)
Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean, April 4-5, 2008
This conference provided an interdisciplinary forum for discussing the ways in which constructions of race have influenced culture, art, politics, ideas of gender, and nation-building efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean. Participants explored, for example, artistic representations of blackness and its relationship to the construction of individual and collective identity. They also addressed the role and use of racial discourse in defining (and denying) citizenship, motivating state-sponsored multiculturalism policies, and informing academic discourses on the nation and the study thereof. The questions that participants engaged with demonstrated the importance that academic organizations have come to afford to the study of race within a transnational context, and with the changing face of the study of blackness in the academy, which includes increasing numbers of positions focusing on blackness in the region, as well as on transnational black cultures in the Americas.
Thomas Holt (Chicago) and Peter Wade (Manchester) were our keynote speakers. We were also fortunate to count the following scholars among our presenters:
Soraya Aracena (Colectivo Videoteca Chango Prieto, Dominican Republic)
Petrine Archer-Straw (Cornell University)
Stephen Berrey (IUB)
Whitney Edwards (IUPUI/Howard)
Lessie Jo Frazier (IUB)
Luis González (IUB)
Shane Green (IUB)
Vivian Halloran (IUB)
Javier León (IUB)
Alejandro Madrid (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Emily Maguire (IUB)
John McDowell (IUB)
Jason McGraw (IUB)
Alejandro Mejías-López (IUB)
Robin Moore (The University of Texas at Austin)
Jean Rahier (Florida International University)
Maritza Quinones Rivera (IUB)
Iris Rosa (IUB)
Sonia Beatriz dos Santos (The University of Texas at Austin)
Micol Seigel (IUB)
Stephen Selka (IUB)
Jennifer Thorington Springer (IUPUI)
Michelle Stephens (Colgate)
Marvin Sterling (IUB)
All sessions held in the Dogwood Room of the IMU. For more information about this conference, please check the American Studies home page or contact Deborah Cohn at dncohn@indiana.edu.
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