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Seminar "Representations of crime and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean"
NALACS/CEDLA/Radboud University Symposium
Amsterdam, Friday June 15, 2012
This interdisciplinary symposium seeks to explore the ways in which crime and violence are represented in Latin America and the Caribbean. It will bring together scholars from the social sciences and humanities who study cultural expressions of these pressing concerns. Focusing on popular culture and literature, speakers will analyze the various cultural strategies employed throughout the region to interpret and frame the impact of crime and violence. When can such representations be seen as everyday coping strategies for dealing with the experience of living with these phenomena? How do specific forms of popular culture, such as the baile funk music of Brazilian favelas or the dancehall parties of Jamaican ghettos, serve to legitimate the authority of criminal leaders and gangs? How are processes of aestheticizing and poeticizing violence and illegality fed by commercial interests? The seminar will address these and other issues through analysis of popular music, video clips, film, literature and visual culture.
Please click here to view the complete program.
LAFF
From April 18-27 the annual Latin America Film Festival will take place in Utrecht. Nalacs contributes to the festival by hosting a film screening and debate. These are scheduled for Sunday afternoon 3 pm in The Louis Hartlooper Complex. Visit the LAFF website for more information.
The film screened is Miss Bala by Gerardo Naranjo. With this narco thriller, Gerardo Naranjo delivers a film with Hollywood allure; exciting, sensational, gut-wrenching, dark and filled with action and violence. The poor Mexican Laura becomes entangled in a drug war, when she attempts to become Miss Baja California. This film does not offer a romanticized view of narcotrafico in contrast to many Latin American movies in this genre. Director Naranjo is consciously breaking with the perspective of the narco as a cult figure and the glamorization of the associated violence. Central in this cultural turn is the character of the young woman Laura, who acts as anti-heroin in this scenario. Correspondent Cees Zoon will report on how this movie was received and how it is perceived in view of the upcoming elections.
Language of the debate: Dutch.
Speakers: - Arij Ouweneel, CEDLA, ‘Miss Bala and the Appeal to the Mexican Chaos Schema’, Ruby Sanders, CEDLA, ‘De narconovela en de Colombiaanse identiteit’ - Cees Zoon, Correspondent en auteur van ‘Narcostaat, Mexico’, Meulenhoff, 2011 - Edwin Rap, NALACS.
We have a limited number of free tickets available for NALACS members. Please send an email to nalacs@cedla.nl
OLA (Latin America Research Group) is looking for new members!
OLA is a forum where PhD students of different disciplines and Dutch universities meet once a month. We read and comment on each other’s work, including chapters of dissertations, drafts of journal articles, and research proposals. Also, we discuss PhD related issues, as for example publication and/ or conference panel strategies, practical issues related to fieldwork, etc., and we have dinner once a year.
Are you interested in joining OLA? Please email Mijke de Waardt at m.f.dewaardt@cedla.nl We also kindly ask PhD supervisors to draw PhD candidates’ attention to OLA.
Nalacs Thesis Award 2011
Every year, Nalacs honors the best MA thesis on Latin America and the Caribbean. The winner of this year was announed during the conference on October 13 2011. The jury considered ‘Kids on the Frontline of Haiti’s Fault Line: Children’s Perspectives on their Earthquake Relocation’ by Talitha Stam (University of Utrecht) as the best thesis. Please find the jury report and reviews of all nominated theses here.
You can also click on this link to watch Talitha talk about Haiti on the TV show 'Pauw en Witteman'.
Contact
NALACS c/o Jolanda van den Boom
Keizersgracht 395-397
1016 EK Amsterdam
020-52553244
nalacs@cedla.nl