Recent News
New book by UConn History PhD alumna Rosa Carrasquillo
Out soon, a new book on the historical memory of slavery and the slave trade in Santo Domingo, by UConn History alumna Rosa Carrasquillo (Prof. at College of the Holy Cross). Follow Editora Educación Emergente in X for more information.
[Read More]Interim Director on CT Public Radio
El Instituto director Charles Venator-Santiago was invited to join Connecticut Public Radio’s Where We Live in political misinformation.
[Read More]New Citation for Director Venator-Santiago in Politico
El Instituto Interim Director Venator-Santiago was recently quoted in Politico. He provided an analysis of the local primary environment in Puerto Rico.
[Read More]Upcoming Events
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Mar
19
The Role of Latin American Indigenous Images & Narrations in Healing Colonial Wounds 11:00am
The Role of Latin American Indigenous Images & Narrations in Healing Colonial Wounds
Tuesday, March 19th, 2024
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
The Dodd Center for Human Rights
ES: “El Papel de las Imágenes y Narrativas Indígenas Latinoamericanas en la Sanación de las Heridas Coloniales”
Language: Please note that this discussion will be held in Spanish with simultaneous translation provided to English. Those who would like to listen along in English are encouraged to bring a smartphone and headphones.
Please Register Below
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Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui is a Bolivian sociologist of Aymara and Sephardic descent. Her work focuses on the socio-political history of Bolivia, collective memory, and imagery as a social document. She served as a professor at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés for 35 years until her retirement in 2014. She currently teaches at various universities in Bolivia and abroad. In 2019, she was awarded honorary doctorates from UMSA and the University of San Luis (Argentina). In 1983, she co-founded the Andean Oral History Workshop with Tomás Huanca Laura, alongside students and faculty of the Public University of La Paz. During the challenging times of Bolivian ‘progressivism,’ she organized the Ch’ixi Collective with UMSA faculty and students, with its headquarters (Tambo Ch’ixi in Tembladerani) housing the Free Lecture, where she has directed the Sociology of Image Seminar since 2015.
Rivera Cusicanqui has authored several notable books, including Oprimidos pero no Vencidos: Luchas del Campesinado Aymara y Qhichwa, 1900-1980 [EN: “Oppressed but not Defeated: Peasant Struggles Among the Aymara and Qhechwa in Bolivia, 1900-1980”] (1984, 2003); Los Artesanos Libertarios y la Ética del Trabajo (co-authored with Zulema Lehm, 1988); Las Fronteras de la Coca (2003); Violencias (re)Encubiertas en Bolivia (2010); Mito y Desarrollo. El Giro Colonial del Gobierno del MAS (2015); Un Mundo Ch’ixi es Posible. Ensayos = un Presente en Crisis (2015, 2020); and Sociología de la Imagen (2018, 2023).
She has been a visiting professor at universities spanning Latin America including UNAM, Oaxaca, and Guadalajara (Mexico); FLACSO and Universidad Andina (Ecuador); and São Paulo and Santa Catarina (Brazil). In Europe, she has been invited to teach at universities and art spaces in Tenerife, Lisbon, Paris, and Barcelona. Rivera Cusicanqui has received several awards for her work, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bolivia Strategic Research Program (PIEB, La Paz, 2014); the Culture 21 Award from the United Cities and Local Governments organization (CGLU, Barcelona/Mexico 2016); and the Ester Boserup Award (Copenhagen, 2023).
In the audiovisual field, she has written and directed documentaries and docu-fictions such as Khunuskiw: Recuerdos del Porvenir, Wut Walanti: Lo irreparable, and the series Las Fronteras de la Coca along with the fictional film Sueño en el Cuarto Rojo. She self-identifies as an Anarchist and Birchola.
Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez is an artist from the Indigenous Mapuche community in Chile whose work explores the social landscape, history, culture, and worldview of his people. His films use a variety of approaches to engage with, activate, and preserve Indigenous traditions and foster understanding. Kuifi ül (Ancient Sound) enacts the healing and awakening power of the trutruka, a traditional wind instrument. Trankal Küra presents a dance of resistance on stolen land, while reveries are re-created in Super 8 film and video in Los sueños de la Machi Silvia Kallfüman. Künü documents the commissioning and construction of a Mapuche ceremonial center, memorial, and place for parliament in Loncoche. It demonstrates the diplomatic prowess of the Mapuche leaders, who won consensus amongst disparate Indigenous communities, a forestry company, and the Chilean architects who helped them design the place.
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This event is part of a series held by the Gladstein Visiting Professor of Human Rights. Other events during the residency include:
- Friday, March 22: “Anarchist Struggles in La Paz: Militant Repression of the Local Workers Federation and Women’s Workers Federation.” Photographic exhibition curated by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui.
- Tuesday, March 26: “Collective Struggles in Defense of the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Populations Attacked by the Bolivian State, 2011-2023.” Public lecture by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui.
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The Gladstein Visiting Professor is a distinguished scholar with international standing in the study of human rights, who participates in a 10-day visit to the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute at UConn. During that time, they deliver a major public lecture, teach a seminar in their specialty, and consult with the faculty and graduate students of the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute’s research programs.
This event is co-sponsored by the Buen Vivir and Collective Healings Initiative, El Instituto, the Departments of Anthropology and Digital Media & Design, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Native American Cultural Programs, as well as the Research Programs on Arts & Human Rights and Global Health & Human Rights at the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute.
Contact Information:
Alex Branzell, Events & Communications Coordinator, Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut
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Mar
20
Reproductive Justice: The Intersection of Health, Rights, and Social Justice 6:30pm
Reproductive Justice: The Intersection of Health, Rights, and Social Justice
Wednesday, March 20th, 2024
06:30 PM
Student Union
Reproductive justice is a feminist framework, developed by women of color, that center’s the needs of the most marginalized and affirms our human right to bodily autonomy and to live healthy lives with access to the necessary physical, mental, political, economic, social, and sexual resources for the well-being of all people. The three core values of reproductive justice are the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent a child or children in safe and healthy environments.
This discussion will examine and highlight the disparities in care, access, and how it affects Black maternal health and mortality rates. Attendees will also understand the reproductive justice framework, learn about access and advocacy in Connecticut, and the barriers students have in accessing care.
Please register using the button to the left.
Join us at the Women’s Center for a Watch Party!
This panel is sponsored by the Women’s Center and the UConn Foundation as part of the #ThisIsAmerica series.
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Mar
21
Latino Education Series SP24 with Dr. Michele Back 5:00pm
Latino Education Series SP24 with Dr. Michele Back
Thursday, March 21st, 2024
05:00 PM
Gentry Building
Dr. Michele Back “Performing Knowledge and Identity in Native/Heritage Spanish Peer Tutoring Interactions”
Dr. Back offers a retrospective analysis of three previously published works (Back, 2020; Back, 2016a; Back, 2016b) about native/heritage speaker interaction in Spanish peer tutoring contexts. She first examines how knowledge is negotiated and co-constructed in peer tutoring sessions, particularly when gaps in lexical knowledge are evident on the part of the peer tutor. She discusses how these peer tutors draw upon embodied, artifactual, and historical resources, as well as “social others” (Lantolf, 2015) to resolve lexical gaps and position themselves as experts or non-experts. She then moves to an examination of a peer tutoring session in which knowledge of a popular Mexican television personality led to resistance and interactional asynchrony between the tutor and tutee. She outlines possible reasons for this asynchrony, with a focus on the difficulties of negotiating cultural and symbolic knowledge among native/heritage speakers, despite the potential richness that peer tutoring environments could provide for this type of language learning. She concludes with implications for language learning, including the potential the benefits of peer tutoring programs for both native/heritage and L2 Spanish learners, as well as the need for more transformative approaches in language learning for these programs to be truly enriching.
Dr. Michele Back is Associate Professor of World Languages Education at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, where she works with Spanish, French, Chinese, and ASL language teacher candidates. Dr. Back’s research interests include teacher development and professionalization; cultivating global citizenship; the ethical and equitable use of language learning technology, intersections of race, discourse, and identity; developing a pedagogy of symbolic competence; and the role of translanguaging and multilingual ecology in transforming schools and other communities of practice. She has published articles in the Modern Language Journal,Foreign Language Annals, TESOL Quarterly, and CALICO, as well as the books Transcultural Performance: Negotiating Globalized Indigenous Identities (Palgrave, 2015) and Racialization and Language: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Peru (co-edited with Virginia Zavala, Routledge, 2019).
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Mar
27
Workshop #1: Machine learning applications for text and unstructured data 3:00pm
Workshop #1: Machine learning applications for text and unstructured data
Wednesday, March 27th, 2024
03:00 PM
Ryan Building
This workshop aims to introduce machine learning (ML) algorithms for text and unstructured data. You will start with an overview of Python programming and ML techniques and then turn to ML applications for text and unstructured data.
- In the first workshop (March 27), you will see applications to generate databases from PDF documents (historical censuses, reports, articles, and others).
- In the second workshop (April 3), you will examine the applications of news to create socioeconomic indicators. Finally, you will see applications to generate socioeconomic indicators using satellite images.
Limited Space.
Refreshments Served!
There are no minimum requirements for this event. All are welcome to join!
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Apr
3
Workshop #2: Machine learning applications for text and unstructured data 3:00pm
Workshop #2: Machine learning applications for text and unstructured data
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024
03:00 PM
Ryan Building
This workshop aims to introduce machine learning (ML) algorithms for text and unstructured data. You will start with an overview of Python programming and ML techniques and then turn to ML applications for text and unstructured data.
- In the first workshop (March 27), you will see applications to generate databases from PDF documents (historical censuses, reports, articles, and others).
- In the second workshop (April 3), you will examine the applications of news to create socioeconomic indicators. Finally, you will see applications to generate socioeconomic indicators using satellite images.
Limited Space.
Refreshments Served!
There are no minimum requirements for this event. All are welcome!
Contact Information:
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