Latin American Studies

Mexican women writers are driving an affective rearrangement of aesthetic practices, places of enunciation, and the “lettered city” — a shift that is shaking up ideas about the canon, the functioning of national literature, and the role of the intellectual in the 21st century. As Cristina Rivera Garza has pointed out, we are witnessing a transformation in literature where the book is no longer the endpoint, nor is there a singular figure of the author.

Over three decades, Robert Nickelsberg shot photos of insurgents and counter-insurgents in El Salvador, Iraq and Afghanistan for Time magazine.  For this event, he will present B&W images of the Salvadoran civil war and go into what they tell us about the choices facing Salvadorans.  U.S. support for a rightwing dictatorship not only motivated many to flee to the U.S., Nickelsberg will argue, but also laid the groundwork for present-day chaos at the southern border.