Conferences, Symposia and Lecture Series

 Co organizer with Ofelia Ferrán (Department of Spanish and Portuguese) and Brian Engdhal (Medical School)

Minneapolis, University of Minnesota. 

October 3-4, 2019  

This two-day conference brings together members from the University of Minnesota, the surrounding community, and major research institutions abroad to better understand the impacts of trauma upon individuals and societies. A special (although not exclusive) emphasis will be placed on the post-dictatorship experiences of Argentina and Spain.

Sponsored by: Spanish and Portuguese Studies, CLA Office of the Dean, Institute for Advanced Study, Imagine Grant, GPS Alliance, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Center for German and European Studies, Institute for Global Studies, History Department, Department of Art, Human Rights Program, The Spanish Ministry of Culture

Marking the 150th anniversary of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, this celebration highlights the wide range of creative and scholarly pursuits among CLA faculty. 

• The Amazing Decade or When the Students Changed the Mission of the CLA

• Neuroscience and the Human Condition

• Big Data and the Future of Social Research

• The Visibility of Gender, New Designs of Invisibilities

• Memory, Human Rights, and Post Coloniality

• Space, Land, and Environmental Humanities

• Looking Forward: CLA in 2068

Ausencias/Absences (Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay):  by Gustavo Germano. 

Quarter Gallery (Regis Center for the Art) 

Novemeber 7-18, 2017.

Gustavo Germano's 'Ausencias/Absences' brought to the Quarter Gallery at Regis, by Kate Drakulic, Minnesota Daily, November 13, 2017 

This exhibit is co-sponsored by the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, Department of Art, Hispanic Issues, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Human Rights Program, the Human Rights Center, University of Minnesota Libraries, the Department of Philosophy, Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, the Department of History and the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (Gustavus Adolphus College). 

Ausencias/Absences is an exhibition of photographs by Gustavo Germano. The artist makes enforced disappearance visible by showing us pairs of images: one that belongs to a family in the past before disappearance, and another that attempts to recreate that same photograph after the disappearance of one of the pictured loved ones. The photographs taken decades later show the absences of the victims of State–sponsored violence in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay during the dictatorships from the 1960s to the 1980s. Thus, much time has elapsed between the two photographs in each diptych. And within that lapse of time resides the horror of past human rights violations, but also the work of the truth commissions, trials, and other struggles for truth and justice. By capturing the memory of the disappeared through those empty spaces that were left forever in the families, Germano’s project reminds us of the devastating and long-lasting effects of human rights violations.

Gustavo Germano (b. 1964, Argentina) has been working on photographic projects related to themes of memory since 2006. In his three series, all entitled Ausencias/Absences (2006, 2012 and 2016), Germano focuses on the victims of enforced disappearance during the dictatorships in Argentina (1976-83), Brazil (1964-1985) and Uruguay (1973-1984). In 2009, Germano completed a series entitled Distancias/Distances a project on the Spanish republican exile of 1939. In 2015, he launched the project Búsquedas/Searches, a series about the theft and trafficking of newborn children in Spain during the Franco dictatorship (1939/1975) and the restitution of identity to the grandchildren of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. 

Ni Una Menos: 

The Activists behind the Global Movement against Gender Violence. 

Co-Organizer with Christina Ewig ( Humphrey School of Public Affairs) 

Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 

March 29. 2017.

Sponsors: University of Minnesota: Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair | Humphrey School Center on Women, Gender and Public Policy | Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change | Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies | Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies | Human Rights Program | Department of Sociology | Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies Macalester College: Anthropology Department | International Studies | Latin American Studies Program | Office of the Provost | Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies 

A movement condemning violence against women has blossomed in Latin America – Not One Woman Less, Ni Una Menos. On June 3, 2015, 300,000 participants marched in Buenos Aires, Argentina. On August 13, 2016, 500,000 marched in Lima and other cities in Peru. On October 19, 2016 another massive march took place in Argentina, with simultaneous marches in Mexico, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. Violence against women is an old problem, but Ni Una Menos demonstrates that activism against it has taken on new proportions. This event brings activists from the Argentine and Peruvian movements together to discuss the making of this movement: its artistic and social media strategies, its global network, and its impact on policy and culture 

Local Action in response to Migration Network.

Third Internacional Conference.

 Co Organizer with Barbara Frey and Rochelle Hammer

 Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 

September 21-23, 2016.

Conference co­sponsors include: The Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair, Institute for Global Studies, Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, Department of Chicano & Latino Studies, Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies, Immigration History Research Center, Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change 

This conference is designed to share the experiences arising from local action with regard to migration.  It will support the examination of key efforts in response to migration and migrants in the framework of the most recent challenges to the dynamics in the movement of peoples that unite Mesoamerica and North America as well as their transnational effects, with emphasis on work that focuses on the human rights of migrants in different contexts, the importance of support organizations to migrants, the analysis of politics and programs of support of migrant populations, the role of testimonial, artistic, and cultural practices in the opening of new areas of debate, and the transformations and cultural challenges that they highlight. 

The conference is organized with the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla and the Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas

Symposium Renewing the Gaze: Socio-Historical Approaches to Hispanic Issues.

Minneapolis, University of Minnesota. 

Nov 2, 2015.

As a celebration of the 30th anniversary of Hispanic Issues, this symposium highlights new formulations, interdisciplinary approaches, and engagement with the most relevant debates about literature and other aesthetic practices in Latin America and Iberia. 

This event is sponsored by Hispanic Issues and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies 

Erasures: Gender, Violence and Human Rights.

Minneapolis, University of Minnesota,

 October 24-25, 2013.

Participants

Sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, the College of Liberal Arts, the Human Rights Program, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Institute of Global Studies, The Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, The Institute for Advanced Study, the Institute of Linguistics, the Human Rights Center and the Departments of Sociology, German, Scandinavian and Dutch; Philosophy, English, Anthropology , Gender, Women and Sexuality, Writing Studies and Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. 

PROGRAM

Mural por los Derechos Humanos 

by Argentine Artist Miguel Rep 

March 1-3, 2012.

Sponsored by: The University of Minnesota Imagine Fund, supported by a generous donation from the McKnight Foundation; Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies; College of Liberal Arts;  Institute for Global Studies; the Global Program and Strategy Alliance's Global Spotlight Initiative; Gustavus Adolphus College (Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies).

Our Special Thanks to Mark Knierim, Department of Art, UMN

International Symposium Ongoing Dialogues on Memory and Human Rights. 

Co-organizer with Jaime Hanneken

University of Minnesota September 29-October 1, 2011.

Sponsored by University of Minnesota Imagine Funds, supported by a generous donation from the McKnight Foundation,  Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, College of Liberal Arts, Institute of Global Studies, Global Spotlight, OIP's biennial focus on a region of the world and a pressing global issue, School of Journalism, University of Minnesota Libraries, the following academic departments: Sociology, Art History, Writing Studies, English, German Scandinavian and Dutch, and Women Studies. 

This international symposium  addresses the role that literature, art and film have in the struggles against enforced disappearance, torture, degrading treatment,  human trafficking, violence against immigrants, gender violence, and feminicide. We seek to address the relations between artistic practices and struggles against impunity and between aesthetics and ethics, and to give visibility to current human rights concerns and to the design of practices of memory.

This interdisciplinary symposium gathers an international group of guest speakers, in the areas of the humanities, the arts, social sciences, and Law, from the University of Minnesota, and from universities and organizations in the United States, Latin America, Portugal and Spain.

Plenary talk: Jean Franco, Columbia University

Symposium.

Human Rights in Latin American and Iberian Cultures 

Co-organizer with Raul Marrero Fente.

 Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 

April 23 and 24, 2008.

This event is sponsored by Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, the College of Liberal Arts, the Human Rights Program, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Institute of Global Studies, The Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, The Institute for Advanced Study, the Institute of Linguistics, the Human Rights Center and the Departments of Sociology, German, Scandinavian and Dutch; Philosophy, English, Anthropology , Gender, Women and Sexuality, Writing Studies and Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. 

Program

Publication: Human Rights in Latin American and Iberian Cultures. Ed. Ana Forcinito, Raúl Marrero-Fente, and Kelly McDonough, HIOL 2009.

This event addresses t he complexity of literature, culture, and international law as a result of the turn to authoritarianism in  the 1970s, and the issues encountered in the transition t o democracy since the late 1980s. We seek to emphasize the contribution that continued research in the Iberian and Latin American worlds can make in the building of an atmosphere of good will, solidarity, and trust between the United States, Latin America, Spain, and Portugal via the exchange of their experiences in politics, the arts. popular culture, literature, investigative journalism and testimonio. 

Crossing the Boundaries

Workshop

 Co –organizer. with Francisco Ocampo. 

April 1, 2007.

Sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies

This one day event addresses the question about the state of the disciplines of Hispanic Studies today and the new challenges that Linguistics and Literature are facing, in particular with regards to the crossing of disciplinary borders such as in Cultural Studies and in the integration of Linguistics and Literature.

Morning session: Linguistics vis à vis Literature and Culture

Afternoon Session: The challenges of Cultural Studies

Workshop:

 New Directions of Latin American Feminisms,

Co Organizer. with Joanna O’Connell, 

April 14, 2007

Sponsored by Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, College of Liberal Arts; Department of Chicano Studies; Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies; Institute for Global Studies; Office for University Women; Department of American Studies; Institute for Advanced Study.

Discussions on the new challenges and new directions that the pluralities of feminisms are taking today in the Americas and how are these challenges are shaping new theoretical approaches. Participants engage in dialogue with four distinguished guest panelists and with each other as we address recent perspectives on feminist cultural theory in/about Latin America and discuss the newdirections that Latin American(ist) feminisms are taking or need to take in the re-articulation of feminist practices.

Sara Castro-Klarén, Johns Hopkins University

Jean Franco, Columbia University

Cynthia Tompkins, Arizona State University

Amy Kaminsky, University of Minnesota