When

Friday, November 3, 2017

Location

Cost

Free

Register

Contact

1st Mesoamerican Studies Center (MASC) Conference at UC Merced.

“Mesoamericans in California: Immigrants’ Resistance, Social Movements, Rights, and Memory”

The University of California Merced’s Mesoamerican Studies Center (MASC) has undertaken a project led by faculty and students to advance understanding and formulate plans of action that address issues pertaining to Mesoamerican immigrants in the US, social movements, human rights, and memory of Mesoamerican cultures and societies which have nurtured massive displacements towards the US. MASC will host a one-day conference to showcase research by emerging scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

The conference will offer ample opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange on topics such as socially engaged scholarship, enhancing strategic issues of inequality, power & social justice, sustainability and human health, immersion in local languages, cultures, and histories of Mesoamerica, or studies of the geographical or translocal sites of Mesoamerican civil societies. It will also address current events of critical interest to the Mesoamerican and Latina/o communities.

Featuring keynote speakers:

"Building Power and Fighting for Social Transformation: Contemporary Youth Movements in California," Veronica Terriquez, Associate Professor of Sociology, UC Santa Cruz.

"‘One Pair of Sandals to Go and Another to Return’: Of Hummingbird Cycles and Circular Histories in Mesoamerica,” Iris Montero, Ph.D., Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, Brown University.

“Rethinking (again and again) Latin American Studies: Three Keys to the Field’s Vibrancy and Two Dangers on the Horizon,” Charles R. Hale, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin.