Latin American & Latino Studies Program

2007

Wednesday, January 17th, 2007
12:00pm
3401 Walnut Street Suite 331A

Johny Irizarry
Lighthouse

Maria Mills-Torres
Department of Education

Stanton Wortham
University of Pennsylvania

Learning from the Challenges: Latino Youth and Education in the Philadelphia Area

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Wednesday, February 21st. 2007
12:00noon
3401 Walnut Street Suite 331A

Ana Maria Ochoa
Associate Professor of Music
New York University

Dr. Ochoa obtained her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and folklore from Indiana University (1996).  She is the former director of the Music Archives of the Colombian Ministry of Culture and she was a researcher at the Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia (Colombia) as well as at The Centro Nacional de Información, Investigación y Documentación Musical Carlos Chávez (CENIDIM) in Mexico.  She was also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at Columbia University.
      Dr. Ochoa's research focuses on Latin America, particularly Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, and her published books include Entre los Deseos y los Derechos, Un Ensayo Crítico sobre Políticas Culturales (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología, 2003), Músicas Locales en Tiempos de Globalización (Buenos Aires: Editorial Norma), and Ana María Ochoa and Alejandra Cragnolini, eds. Músicas en Transición (Bogotá; Ministerio de Cultura).

Title: Latin America Aurality and the Lettered City

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Wednesday, April 18th, 2007
12:00pm
3401 Walnut Street Suite 331A

Amparo Yolanda Padilla
English Department
University of Penn

 The Genres of Ambivalence: Revolution, Assimilation, and the Cold War in Luis Perez's "El Coyote, the Rebel"

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2006

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
12:00pm
3401 Walnut Street Suite 331A

Robert Smith
Associate Professor, Sociology, Immigration Studies and Public Affairs
Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)

Transnational Life among Children of Immigrants

Transnational life -- here, the maintenance and cultivation of meaningful links between migrants home towns and their settled lives in the host country -- is sometimes argued to be a first generation phenomenon, which will disappear with the second generation.  Robert Smith's book, Mexican New York: Transnational Worlds of New Immigrants examines how children of immigrants relate to transnational life and affect its course.  In this talk, Smith discusses how students and gang members participate in transnational life, and how the life course and gender affect it in the second generation.    Transnational life is both celebrated as groundbreaking and innovative, and condemned as lacking in explanatory power.   Smith's ethnographic examination of how the second generation actually participates in transnational life addresses  an empirical and theoretical need,  and shows us how processes of incorporation and assimilation are at work in a and changed by this transnationalized context.  

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Wednesday, November 15th, 2006
12:00pm
3401 Walnut Street Suite 331A

Adriana Brodsky
Assistant Professor of History
St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Celebrating the State: Sephardim and the uses of "lo Argentino" in intra-community politics

Adriana Brodsky, assistant professor of history, received her Ph.D. from Duke University. She has been awarded several fellowships and grants from such institutions as the National Women’s Studies Association, Duke University, and the American Historical Association. She has been published in U.S. and Argentinean academic journals. Before coming to SMCM, Brodsky was an assistant professor at the University of Southern Indiana.

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Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
12:00pm
3401 Walnut Street Suite 331A

Licia Fiol - Matta
Associate Professor
Department of Latin American & Puerto Rican Studies
Lehman College New York

Chencha's Gait: Latin Popular Music and Normativity in Mirta Silva

Mirta Silva (Puerto Rico 1923-1987) is known as one of the all-time best interpreters of Cuban guarachas, which were hugely popular across the Caribbean, US Latino communities and Latin America. This talk explores aspects of Silva's career that illuminate gender narratives and female figurations in Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Latin popular music. Licia Fiol-Matta analyzes the fusion between the real-life Silva and the fictive character of "Chencha". Originally a co-creation with the Cuban composer Ñico Saquito, this character morphed into Latin/Puerto Rican television's quintessential gossip queen, with far-reaching individual and group ramifications.

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