Past Events

2009 - 2010 Academic Year

2008 - 2009 Academic Year

2007 - 2008 Academic Year

2006 - 2007 Academic Year

2005 - 2006 Academic Year

2004 - 2005 Academic Year

2003 - 2004 Academic Year

2002 - 2003 Academic Year

Previous Events (2001-2002 and before)

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Event Video Coverage

8th Annual Jagan Lecture Series Video 

Professor Keith Sandiford, March 21, 2009

 

Video footage of various panels and presentations of the "Rethinking Extractive Industry" Conference

York University, March 5-7, 2009

 

The Context of Atlantic Slavery and the Abolition of the British Slave Trade

By Franklin W. Knight, Nov. 13, 2007

 

Years of Human Rights Struggle in Argentina

By Nora Cortiñas, 2006 Baptista Lecture

 

Sweet & Sour Sauce: Sexual Politics in Jamaican Dancehall Culture

By Carolyn Cooper, 2005 Jagan Lecture

 

The Disappearing Island: Haiti, History, and the Hemisphere

By J. Michael Dash, 2004 Jagan-Baptista Lecture

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Winners announced: 2008 Michael Baptista Essay Prize

CERLAC is pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 Michael Baptista Essay Prize for outstanding scholarly papers on topics of relevance to the area of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

At the undergraduate level, Laura Landertinger (Sociology and Philosophy) won for her paper: “Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST)”. At the graduate level, Nicholas Balaisis (Communication and Culture) won for his essay: “The Publicness of Melodrama in the Cuban Special Period.”

The essays were nominated by York faculty members and evaluated by a committee of CERLAC Fellows.

Laura Landertinger’s outstanding paper “examines the establishment of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil in 1984, analyzes its growth, development and influence and assesses whether or not it has been successful in its bid to improve the lives of its supporters.”  One reviewer described Laura’s work as “a very good piece, well researched, argued and presented and certainly deserving of consideration for the Baptista Prize.”

Nicholas Balaisis’ essay, affirmed one evaluator, is “a superbly argued and original analysis” that “makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the two-way links between a particular cultural form (film) and the political, cultural and social economic transformation of the case studied (Cuba)”, using “an insightful and qualified… framework (Habermas re public spaces)”.  While the adjudicators noted that all the graduate-level nominated papers “add to knowledge and all have other strengths, the Balaisis paper is most original, theoretically sophisticated and coherently argued.”

Both of these prize-winning papers soon will be available online as part of CERLAC's Baptista Prize-Winning Essays Series.

All of the nominated papers represent high-calibre scholarly work at their authors’ respective levels of study, and merit recognition as worthy of candidacy for this prize. The other undergraduate papers nominated for the 2008 prize were: “Subjects or Citizens: Caribbean Communities in Britain” by Heather Williams; “An Afternoon with Mrs. Winter: The Life Story of a Saint Lucian Woman” by Richard Lanns-Allain; and “East Indian in the West Indies” by Alyssa Sewlal.

The other graduate-level nominees were: “Contemplating Environmental History and Socio-Ecological Relationships within the Conservation Contact Zone in North Rupununi, Guyana” by Tanya Chung Tiam Fook; “Indigenous Property Rights and Privatization: State Responsibility under the American Convention in the Negritos Case” by Charis Kamphuis; “Changing Social Relations of Production in Urabá: Social Forces and the Colombian Form of State” by Olivier Plamondon; and “Yuh Nah Sih Mih Fuh True/You Don’t See Who I Really Am:  The Hybrid Politics Of Guyanese Racial Identity” by Rosanne Purnwasie.

The Michael Baptista Essay Prize was established by the friends of Michael Baptista and the Royal Bank of Canada. This $500 Prize is awarded annually to both a graduate and an undergraduate student at York University in recognition of an outstanding scholarly essay of relevance to the area of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, from the humanities, social science, business or legal perspective.

The Michael Baptista Essay Prize and Lecture are named in honour of Michael Baptista in recognition of the areas central to his spirit and success: the importance of his Guyanese / Caribbean roots, his dedication to and outstanding achievement at the Royal Bank of Canada, and his continued and unqualified drive and love of learning.

For more information on the essay prize, see: http://www.yorku.ca/cerlac/ projects.htm#baptista

If you are a York faculty member and wish to nominate a student’s essay for this prize, please contact CERLAC: cerlac@yorku.ca

Congratulations to this year's winners!

Toronto Star Interviews Laurentino Gomes, Brazilian author & recent CERLAC guest speaker

The defining year for Brazil

Lesley Ciarula Taylor
IMMIGRATION REPORTER
March 18, 2009.

Brazilian Ambassador Paulo Cordeiro de Andrade Pinto and Consul-General Americo Dyott Fontenelle will be special guests at the York University seminar today by bestselling author Laurentino Gomes on his book 1808: How a mad queen, a fearful prince and a corrupt court deceived Portugal and Brazil forever. Gomes, whose book has won the Brazilian equivalent of the Giller Prize, will speak from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. in Room 280 York Lanes.

 

Q: How did you get the idea for 1808?

A: 1808 was born in the newsroom of Veja, the leading weekly news magazine in Brazil, where I worked for more than 15 years as a reporter and editor. In 1997, I was the executive editor of the magazine and my director asked me to prepare a series of specials on Brazilian history. After some months of working, the plan was cancelled, but I decided to go ahead by myself. I published the book in 2007, on the eve of the royal family's arrival for 200th anniversary celebrations.

Q: Why do you think it has been so popular in Brazil and Portugal?

A: For me, this stands as a powerful indication that people in Brazil, as well in Portugal, are looking into the past in search for some explanations to the present. This is very good news. Our virtues as well as our problems have deep roots in the past.

I would risk saying that the year 1808 worked as our national DNA. Brazil was discovered by the Portuguese in 1500, but was invented, or created, as a country only in 1808 with the Portuguese royal family's arrival in Rio de Janeiro. This was our nation-building event, much as 1867 was for Canada.

Q: What do those 13 years you write about, when Brazil became a country very rapidly, mean to you as a piece of history?

A: With the Portuguese Royal Court's arrival, in 1808, Brazil paved the way for its independence ... In little more than one decade, Brazil was decisively transformed, from an isolated, ignorant and forbidden colony to a country ready for its autonomy. This is also an event without parallel in human history. For the first time, a European monarch crossed an ocean in order to live and rule on the other side of the world.

Q: What do you think might have happened if the royal family hadn't come to Brazil?

A: Without the arrival of the Portuguese court, the social and regional conflicts would have gone deeper, to such point that the separation between the provinces would be almost inevitable.

 

Just Visiting profiles people invited to appear at events in the GTA.

CERLAC Fellow Judith Rudakoff's New Play Beautiful Little Lies

Theatre prof's new play is a Cuban cocktail with a twist from Y-File - 11 March 2009

Torontonians yearning to be transported to warmer climes can enjoy the experience vicariously this Sunday through a public workshop performance of York theatre Professor Judith Rudakoff’s current play-in-progress, Beautiful Little Lies.

Set in a land of sand and sun, the play is a far cry from the frost and wind chill of Toronto in March. The staged reading will be presented by Theatre Archipelago, a company dedicated to theatre from and about the Caribbean, and directed by York alumna Rhoma Spencer (MFA '01).

Left: Judith Rudakoff

Rudakoff describes her play as "a Cuban cocktail with a twist". The story unfolds in a small city in Cuba, far from the bustle of Havana, in February of 1998. Originally titled Rum and Cola, the play’s new name derives from the famed “Cuba libre” (free Cuba) cocktail, which local bartenders call “mentirita” (little lie) when no one is listening.

The plot follows the adventures of Juancy, a Cuban transvestite performer; Suzanne, a Canadian tourist whose mother has just died; Moffi, a little white Cuban dog with attitude; Bob, a closeted male homosexual tourist; and Maria, a Cuban mother with a passion for all life has to offer. And like Cuba, the world of Beautiful Little Lies is also populated by the ever-present Orishas, the iconic and earthy spirit guides of the Afro-Cuban belief system.

Rudakoff has been working on Beautiful Little Lies on and off for about a decade. “I was in Cuba in 1998 right after the Pope’s historic visit,” she said. “There was a huge expectation of change that never really materialized. The anticipation and the hope of the people I was in contact with, many of whom were artists of different generations, inspired me to start working on a play about how you can’t begin to seek what you want until you know what you are looking for, and about discovering what ‘home’ means. All of the characters in the play are on a journey, exploring what personal and cultural identity and freedom means to them.”

Right: An image of Cuban nationals photographed by the playwright during her last trip to the island nation

A playwright, dramaturge, critic and author, Rudakoff is a research fellow at CERLAC, York University’s Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean. She has a long-standing interest in Cuba, its history and its artists, with whom she has forged extensive professional and personal connections over the years. Her play Not Having was produced in Spanish translation as Sin Tener by Cuba's Teatro Escambray at their residential theatre colony in La Macagua. It was the first Canadian play to be professionally produced by a Cuban company, and Rudakoff was the first foreigner in the company’s long and distinguished history to be named an honorary member. Another work-in-progress is The Grove, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, set in rural Cuba.

An early draft of Rum and Cola/Beautiful Little Lies was given a reading at York and a staged public showcase in 1998 by Montreal’s Teesri Duniya Theatre, directed by Eda Holmes. It was also read in a Spanish translation by York theatre alumnus Pablo Felices-Luna (MFA ’98) at Teatro Escambray with three generations of Cuban actors.

The 10-year development of the work was necessary, Rudakoff asserts. “I firmly believe you can’t rush these things. On a trip to Cuba in February 2008, I was inspired to shift the focus of the play. It was another extraordinary time to be in Cuba: Fidel Castro resigned while I was there. I returned to Canada on the night of a rare full moon eclipse: doors were closing and other doors were opening and Ellegua, the Orisha who is affiliated with thresholds, among other things, gave me a great big creative shove.”

Rudakoff and Spencer, a Trinidadian theatre artist, met at York eight years ago, when Spencer was pursuing a graduate degree in theatre directing. Spencer’s thesis project was Theatre @ York’s production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s landmark drama, Blood Wedding, which she transposed to Trinidad.

Right: The “Cuba libre” (free Cuba) cocktail, which local bartenders call “mentirita” (little lie)

An actor, director, playwright, comedienne and broadcast journalist, Spencer was voted one of Toronto’s top 10 theatre artists by NOW Magazine in 2005. She served as resident director of the AfriCan Theatre Ensemble before founding Theatre Archipelago in 2004. Productions she has directed for Archipelago include the critically acclaimed Twilight Café by Tony Hall at Toronto’s Theatre Centre. Her performance credits include Mad Miss by Olive Senior and the Edmonton and Toronto tour of the international hit play, Jean and Dinah.

Spencer has been involved with Beautiful Little Lies for some time. Last month, she directed a public workshop of the play with local actors at the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, as part of a three-month residency with Arts in Action, a theatre-in-education outreach unit of the school's Centre for Creative & Festival Arts. Rudakoff was invited to attend the event.

“It was a creatively fruitful experience,” said Rudakoff. “The people of Trinidad and Cuba deeply respect the Orishas of the Yoruban pantheon, but of course the diasporic paths of the spirits and the influences of different oppressive colonial beliefs means differences abound. What was particularly gratifying is way the Trini audiences and actors engaged with the Cuban characters and Orishas. I got a new perspective on the play, and spent the five-hour flight home rewriting!”

Spencer’s company, Theatre Archipelago, is workshopping Rudakoff’s play with an eye to mounting a fully staged production in a future season. Beautiful Little Lies will be read by professional actors at the Papermill Theatre, located at the Todmorden Mills heritage site in Toronto, on March 15 at 4pm. Admission is free.

CERLAC Fellow Margarita Feliciano Named one of Canada's Top 10 Hispanic Canadians

Glendon professor named one of 10 top Hispanic Canadians

Y-File - 24 November 2008

Margarita Feliciano, a York professor emerita in Glendon’s Hispanic Studies Department, was named one of 10 Hispanic Canadians who really made a difference, at the second annual 10 Most Influential Hispanic Canadians awards celebration Nov. 18 at the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Feliciano is a poet, critic and literary translator of Italian-Argentinian origin living in Canada where she has supported the Hispanic community since 1969. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications throughout Europe and North America and are the subject of a doctoral thesis soon to be published by McGill University. She is director of Celebración Cultural del Idioma Español (CCIE), an organization which has promoted Spanish language, cinema, arts and culture in Canada since 1992.

“Over the past 40 years, the Spanish-speaking community in Canada has progressively become an important presence in the socio-cultural makeup of this country,” said Feliciano. “This, of course, did not happen on its own. It is the result of the effort of many individuals, who have been contributing to the community over the years in many and meaningful ways. I feel deeply honoured to be counted in this group.”

In 2005, Feliciano founded Antares, Canada's first publishing house dedicated to the publication of literary works in Spanish and located at the Glendon campus. To date, she has translated seven books (six on poetry and one on the Hindu religion). Her research focuses on myths, poetry and translation.

Left: Margarita Feliciano giving her thank you speech at the awards ceremony

Close to 600 people attended the festive award ceremony, hosted by Scotiabank and the Toronto Stock Exchange and supported by many major organizations, including York University.

Journalists and executives from The Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Canadian Business, CBC, FOCAL, Canadian Hispanic Congress, Hispanic Press Association of Canada and five winners from last year's program selected 20 finalists from a pool of 37 nominees. The 10 winners were chosen by the attendees at the awards ceremony, with two awards reserved for entrepreneurs and the other eight for other role models.

Nominations for this year’s 10 Most Influential Hispanic Canadians were submitted from across the country with winners representing a highly educated, fast-growing demographic. Canada's 750,000 Hispanics are the country’s third-largest minority group and their influence is on the rise. The 600 people in attendance ranked the finalists. Their votes were combined with those of the judges to determine the winners for 2008.

Those present at the awards gala were also the first to learn the results of the eagerly awaited "Profile of the Hispanic Community in Canada," a report based on the last census conducted by Statistics Canada in 2006 and presented by Rosemary Bender, director general of StatsCan’s social and demographic branch. This study provides a detailed description of the Hispanic community, including aspects such as country of origin, geographic distribution in Canada, educational and income levels, and labour trends.

 Here are the winners of the 10 Most Influential Hispanic Canadians Awards:

• Bernardo Berdichewsky, research
• Johnny Campuzano, law enforcement
• Esmeralda Enrique, dance
• Margarita Feliciano, literacy
• Mario Guilombo, human rights
• Oscar A. Jofre Jr., entrepreneurship
• Mario Perez, entrepreneurship
• Hon. Guillermo Rishchynski, diplomacy
• Guillermo Silva-Marin, opera
• Eduardo Urueña, media

More about Margarita Feliciano 

Feliciano studied romance languages and literature at the University of California’s Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses, and at the University of Florence in Italy. She has also specialized in Brazilian literature. Feliciano is the former coordinator of Glendon’s Certificate in Spanish/English Translation.

A tireless volunteer and advocate for the community, her work includes being the coordinator of the Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program and of the Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean at York. She is past president of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and founding member of INDIGO – a trilingual literary magazine dedicated to promoting Hispanic literary works. Feliciano sits on the Advisory Board of the Mariano A. Elia Chair of Italian-Canadian Studies and is the organizer of the Stong College Heritage Lecture Series at York.

 

 

 

CERLAC Fellow Deborah Barndt Exhibits photos

Photo exhibit shows the cross-pollination of practice and ideas Y-File - 19 November 2008

The name Deborah means “bee” in Hebrew and true to her name, York environmental studies Professor Deborah Barndt has researched and worked in various Latin American countries drawing the nectar out of practices in one place and pollinating projects in another. Her journey was captured in photographs recently featured in an exhibit titled Cross-Pollinations: Photography and Social Change in the Americas.

The exhibit, which ran Oct. 2 to 20 at the Tinto Coffee House in the Roncesvalles neighbourhood in downtown Toronto highlighted the importance of recovering, reframing and rewriting history and of sharing stories across generations. Barndt's photo exhibit will move to the York campus in January and will be displayed on the main floor of the Health, Nursing & Environmental Studies Building in the Faculty of Environmental Studies Zig Zag Gallery.  

Left: Professor Deborah Barndt on the opening night

For Barndt, the photographs signify a journey back in time. “The ironic thing about revisiting history is that you always see things anew, in terms of the present moment and who you are now and that digging into the past can also clarify where you are and where you are going,” says Barndt.

The retrospective exhibit spans three decades and reflects a journey of particular political movements and revolutionary educational practices linked to them. In her travels, Barndt has moved between Toronto and Latin America. She visited Peru in the 1970s, Nicaragua in the ’80s and Mexico in the ’90s. For each trip, she used her camera to conduct participatory research, capturing people's daily lives and documenting their personal realities on film.   

Barndt sees her photographic work as challenging convention, allowing people to represent themselves and tell their own stories. “These photographs and the stories they tell are not only revolutionary because of their substance but also in how those who have historically been voiceless and invisible to us participate in the storytelling and art-making,” says Barndt. She explains how even though most of the images document experiences from over two decades ago, many still emulate the vital issues that society faces today.

Left: Barndt's photograph of a young literacy teacher returning from the National Literacy Campaign in Nicaragua in 1980

Barndt identifies several different themes that resonate from the stories woven together in the photographs. One is the invisibility of women workers in both the north and south. Also evident is the history of social struggles captured in the images, which Barndt says show how some are lost to memory because of social amnesia as well as deliberate obliteration. As well, a radical form of education appears throughout, drawing content from people's daily lives to think critically and collectively and to actively participate in challenging and changing conditions of injustice. Barndt also highlights the use of cameras and photos as tools in these processes, offering people an opportunity to see themselves or represent themselves, to claim the value of their own stories. Finally, the photos reflect the theme of cross-pollinations – the movement back and forth of peoples across borders, compelled by war, repression, poverty and politics.

Right: One of the 400,000 Nicaraguan peasants who learned to read and write during the 1980 National Literacy Campaign

Barndt’s unconventional research techniques bring art and research together, eliminating the gap between the two and challenging conventional notions. Using participatory research, she democratizes the arts, putting photographs and cameras in the hands of her subjects so that they may represent themselves. With her work, Barndt hopes to inspire educators and researchers on how they can bring the arts into the realm of education and research.

The Community Arts Practice (CAP) joint program of the Faculty of Environmental Studies and the Faculty of Fine Arts does just that. This program, created by Barndt, holds true to her vision of linking education, social justice and art in an effort to represent and convey important issues. The opening of the exhibit also doubled as a fundraiser for the CAP program – a book sale and silent auction of Barndt’s photos were held in the front entrance of the coffee house.  

Left: A guest views Barndt's photographs during the exhibit's opening night at the Tinto Coffee House in Roncesvalles

The Roncesvalles location was significant to Barndt as she also lives in the area. The culturally diverse neighbourhood and the dynamic atmosphere created in the coffee house made the location ideal for the exhibit and fundraiser. “The owners of Tinto have created a space in our neighbourhood for people to connect – across many differences,” explains Barndt. Songs sung in both Spanish and English added another dimension to the opening, bringing the photos to life as music filled the room.

Barndt plans to continue working within her community, using art and photography to represent the diversity of people in Roncesvalles and to help people share their own stories of cross-pollinations. An upcoming project will see her working with CAP students and Parkdale community members to create a mural on the front of the coffee house to reflect the diversity in the area. A second exhibit in her series of retrospectives in March will focus on community-engaged murals around the world, to inspire local residents to represent their stories on neighbourhood walls.

CERLAC Review #31 is now available online

 

CERLAC is pleased to make the latest issue of our newsletter, the CERLAC Review, covering 2006 and 2007, available online. The Review includes articles on some of our major events, including guest lectures by Nora Cortiñas and Franklin W. Knight; project updates; faculty and student profiles; notes about publications and conferences; and other CERLAC-related news.

 

Available in html and pdf formats.

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