NOVEMBER 20 - 4:00 PM - L02 PARESKY STUDENT CENTER
Charles C. Mann, author of the award-winning book 1491 that explores the nature of the "New World" of North and South America in the period before Columbus' arrival, will speak on "The 'Pristine Myth': The American Landscape Before Columbus." The talk will address both the nature of the regional landscape and the endemic human societies that helped to shape it.
A Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, Science, and Wired, Mann has covered the intersection of science, technology, and commerce for many newspapers and magazines here and abroad, including BioScience, The Boston Globe, Fortune, Geo (Germany), The New York Times. Additional information can be found at his web site: http://www.charlesmann.org/
OVERT AND DISCREET VIOLENCE: RUPTURES AND CONTINUITIES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
The doctorate students of Latin American history at Columbia
University are pleased to invite graduate students from all
disciplines and institutions to participate in the conference,
"Overt and Discreet Violence: Ruptures and Continuities in Latin
America and the Caribbean"
The year 2010 marks the centennial of the beginning of the Mexican
Revolution and the bicentennial of upheavals and Independence
movements in several of Spain's American colonies. With this
conference, we hope to highlight the connections between violence as
massive historical rupture -revolutions, wars, riots, rebellions- and
violence as historical continuity- the experience of unremarked
violence in everyday life: What are the ideologies behind violence and
how are they put to work? How does violence become justified,
rationalized, or respected? When does the state seek a "monopoly of
violence" and when does it marginalize, coopt and redirect
already-existing violence? Rather than focus exclusively on instances
of mass upheaval represented by revolutions and wars of independence,
we invite participants to re-think violence historically in terms of:
-Institutional torture
-Banditry and crime
-Public display of violence, torture and execution
-Disciplinary violence
-Racialized violence
-Violence based on gender
-Exclusionary violence
-Border, frontier and transnational violence
-Civil War
-Military and institutional violence
-Guerrilla warfare
-Environmental conflicts: land displacement and conflict over natural
resources
This graduate student conference will take place March 5 and
6, 2010. Prospective participants should send an abstract of no more
than 300 words to
violenceconference@gmail.com no later than October
15, 2009. Accepted participants will be notified by November 1, 2009,
and are required to send a full version of their papers no later than
January 15, 2010. Each participant will have 20 minutes to present.
All inquiries should be directed to the above e-mail address, to Julia
del Palacio at
ajd2128@columbia.edu , or Ariel Lambe at
aml2160@columbia.edu
"Overt and Discreet Violence: Ruptures and Continuities in Latin
America and the Caribbean" is sponsored by the Department of History
at Columbia University, the Institute for Latin American Studies
(ILAS) and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER).
