Current Trends on Latin American Studies: Expanding the Field
‘Expanding the Field: Visual and Material Sources in Latin American Research’
Keynote: Luciana Martins (Birkbeck)
Respondent: Helen Melling (Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London)
How do we find agency beyond the realms of authorship in the colonial archive? Exploring the visual archive of the Kadiwéu indigenous group across a range of media – drawing, photography and film – as both material traces of past and as material objects, this talk will re-trace the multiple transformations of the Kadiwéu body-painting. As inscriptions on skins transformed into archaeological and ethnographic evidence in the work of Guido Boggiani and Claude Lévi-Strauss, they were rendered into pencil drawings on paper, chemical impressions on negative glass plates, printed lines on book pages, real-photo postcards. Furthermore, the talk will investigate how the Kadiwéu patterns initially recorded by Boggiani in the late nineteenth century have been re-inscribed into their cultural heritage today, helping to substantiate claims of the relevance of their culture and ancestral occupation of the land.
About the ‘Current Trends on Latin American Studies’ series
Sponsored by the University of Notre Dame‘s Nanovic Institute for European Studies, this panel series explores current trends on cultural, literary, and historical issues on Latin America.
It invites distinguished scholars—as well as students with an interest in the subject—to discuss specific periods, areas, and topics of Latin America and its connection to colonial and post-colonial Europe.
Panels are free to attend but please note that registration is essential.
Still to come:
Thursday, Feburary 8
’Armed Citizens and Citizens in Arms: What did it Mean to be a Civilian or a Military Man in the First Half of Nineteenth Century Peru?’ with Natalia Sobrevilla (University of Kent) and Vanesa Miseres (University of Notre Dame)
Originally published at international.conductor.nd.edu.