We are excited to be a co-sponsor of this event featuring Dr. Juan Masullo, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University. Read more about the event below, and we hope to see you there.
REFUSING TO COOPERATE WITH ARMED GROUPS: Civilian Agency and Nonviolent Resistance in the Colombian Civil War Thursday, 1 December 2022 4.15-5.30 pm, Science Center 199 Swarthmore College (directions)
How do communities living amidst violence activate their agency and organize nonviolent resistance to protect themselves from armed groups’ violence and rule? In this talk, Dr. Masullo will explore the conditions that led ordinary and unarmed civilians in Colombia to collectively refuse to cooperate with heavily armed groups.
Juan Masullois an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University. He is also a co-editor of Qualitative & Multi-Method Research, the biannual publication of APSA’s Qualitative and Multi-Method Research Section, and associate editor of the International Studies Review.
Sponsored by the Department of Political Science, Latin American and Latino Studies, and the Peace and Conflict Studies Department.
In a recent blog post, we announced the arrival of Prof. Mike Wilson Becerril, who will offer TWO NEW COURSES in Peace and Conflict Studies for the fall semester 2022. We hope you will check them out and share with your friends:
What is violence, and how do we learn to think of it? What is war and why is it started? How can it be avoided? How do we know when we are safe, or what insecurity is? How does media treat war and different forms of violence? How does war end? What are the links between war and everyday life? This course centers on these open questions to develop a framework to make sense of, and critically engage with, issues of conflict, violence, war, and peace. In history books, the news, and our language, violence and war seem to be pervasive. To understand and confront them, we must explore in-depth how they are experienced, interpreted, remembered, institutionalized, normalized, and challenged by everyday people. Exploring diverse approaches to war and peace “from below” and across different contexts, we will build tools to recognize and transform different forms of violence.
Most people in Latin America live under various forms of “violent peace.” Although most states are not at war formally, the means of violence have not receded despite several “waves of democratization,” and in fact, these have become normalized or concealed in everyday relations. Latin America today is reported to have the highest rate of homicides, worst levels of economic inequality, deadliest settings for environmental defenders, highest levels of police-committed killings, and highest levels of gender-based violence in the world. Likewise, it showcases a wide range of political plurality and representation, cultural and biological diversity, and rich historical trajectories often marked by successful struggles for alternative worlds, social justice, and international peace. This interdisciplinary course centers on a comparative, thematic, and chronological study of Latin America to understand the layered meanings and forms of violence, different methods and challenges of promoting justice, and lessons from attempts to build durable peace.
We are excited about these new courses and the opportunity to expand our department’s offerings. Thank you Prof. Wilson Becerril!
Time/Location: Monday, December 3rd from 4:30pm-5:30pm in the IC Dome (Sproul 201)
Description: You are all invited to Zahira Kelly-Cabrera’s talk on Anti-Blackness as Latin American Nationalism. Zahira Kelly-Cabrera aka @Bad_Dominicana is an AfroDominicana mami, writer, artist, mujerista, award-winning sociocultural critic, and international speaker. She is known for advocating for LatiNegra visibility and rights on social media, and unfiltered social critique, broken down in accessible language. She also aims to pick apart white supremacist capitalist hetero-patriarchy from an anticolonial AfroLatina perspective. The talk is open to the public.
Sponsors: The President’s Office, The Black Cultural Center, The Women’s Resource Center, The Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Development, Spanish Department, The Intercultural Center, Sociology & Anthropology Department, ENLACE, SASS, SOCA, Peace & Conflict Studies Department, Black Studies Program, Latin American & Latino Studies Program, The Interfaith Center, Educational Studies Program, and Religion Department.
The 2016 summer Olympics has turned the world’s attention to life in Rio de Janeiro. The city is surrounded by over 1,000 favela communities, which have come to be synonymous with poverty and crime. However, Theresa Williamson ’97 says that while education, health, and sanitation remain to be the top three demands of the people in favelas, the favelas provide a vibrant community for those who live there.
Williamson founded and serves as executive director for Catalytic Communities, a nonprofit organization that is working to destigmatize Rio de Janeiro’s favela communities and integrate them into the wider society. Since its founding in 2000, Catalytic Communities has provided communications, networking, and training support to leaders in the favela communities.
Williamson graduated from Swarthmore with a special major in biological anthropology and a minor in peace and conflict studies. She received her Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania.
Talk: “Enforced Disappearance and Ayotzinapa Testimonials” By Paula Mónaco Felipe and John Gibler
Tuesday, October 4
Multicultural Center (Stokes Hall 106)
4:15-6:00PM
From dozens of books already published about Ayotzinapa’s disappeared students, John Gibler’s An Oral History of Infamy. The attacks against Ayotzinapa student’s (Spanish) and Paula Mónaco’s Ayotzinapa: Eternal Hours (Spanish) are by far the more accurate, mindful and committed to human rights. Writers will be addressing issues of violations of human rights, ethics and journalism in Latin America and Mexico. Live streaming 4:30PM (EST).
Paula Mónaco Felipe, journalist and writer, joined at a very young age the organization HIJOS (Sons and Daughters for Identity, Justice and Against Oblivion and Silence). As a daughter of disappeared people in Argentina under the dictatorship, Mónaco has been an activist for human rights in Argentina and Mexico. Her recent book Las horas eternas (2015) recovers the identity of 43 disappeared students, their families and their lives before they were taken away by the state. She has collaborated with different journals in Argentina, Ecuador and Mexico, as well as she has been correspondent for TeleSur. She also has participated in audiovisual productions for Al Jazeera, TeleSur and Encuentro Channel in Argentina.
John Gibler, journalist and writer, has been reporting last decades about social movements and politics in Mexico. His major non fiction works are: Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt (2009), To Die in Mexico: Dispatches From Inside the Drug War (2011), Tzompantle La fuga de un guerrillero (2014), and his last book Una historia oral de la infamia (2016). Gibler has been working in human rights and social justice organizations in California, Peru and Mexico, he has taught in Hampshire College and University of California at San Diego (La Jolla), as well as he has delivered talks in various universities in US, Canada, Colombia, and Mexico.
For info on both events, contact Assistant Professor of Spanish at Haverford College, Aurelia Gómez Unamuno
Sponsored by Department of Spanish, Distinguished Visitors Program, and the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship.
A new history course this semester can be counted toward a minor in Peace and Conflict Studies! The course is slated to be offered again during the fall semester 2016.
Digging Through the National Security Archive: South American “Dirty Wars” and the United States Involvement
Professor Diego Armus
History 090o
Mondays 1:15 pm – 4:00 pm in Kohlberg 230
This course offers a critical examination of 1970s Southern Cone Latin American military dictatorships focusing on the making of coups d’état; the successful imposition of neoliberal economic agendas by military-civilian alliances; daily life under state terrorism; national security doctrines; and memories of the so-called “Dirty Wars”. As a research oriented course, the second half of the semester will be devoted to a rigorous exercise of investigation focused on the relations between those Latin American dictatorships and the United States using the National Security Archive and other primary sources.
Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. Her most recent books include A History of the Cuban Revolution, Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class, and They Take Our Jobs! And Twenty Other Myths about Immigration. She has been active in Latin America solidarity and immigrants’ rights movements for several decades.
Noam Chomsky joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955, where he is institute professor and professor of linguistics emeritus. Chomsky has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs, and United States foreign policy. Among his recent books are New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind; On Nature and Language; The Essential Chomsky; Hopes and Prospects; Gaza in Crisis; How the World Works; 9-11: Was There an Alternative?; Making the Future: Occupations, Interventions, Empire, and Resistance; The Science of Language; Peace with Justice: Noam Chomsky in Australia; and Power Systems.
Theresa Williamson ’97 graduated with a minor in Peace and Conflict Studies, and she is coming back home to tell us about her work with Catalytic Communities, a development organization she founded and directs. Come to her talk on December 5 in the Scheuer Room.
Catalytic Communities: Entrepreneurship in Community Development in Rio de Janeiro
Theresa Williamson will discuss her work after Swarthmore in creating Catalytic Communities (CatComm), a successful nonprofit organization supporting Rio de Janeiro’s favela communities. Founded in 2000, CatComm has provided communications, networking and training support to over 1500 leaders from over 250 different neighborhoods across Rio.
Since 2009 CatComm, has been increasingly recognized as a watchdog organization as Rio prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, and local officials begin intervening significantly in the city’s favelas.
Williamson will discuss the organization’s development with a particular emphasis on the organizational philosophy that made it possible to adapt quickly to a rapidly changing urban policy shift and evolving needs of its community partners, all within the setting of one of the most dynamic cities in the world today. Topics Williamson will include in her talk: Rio de Janeiro, slum upgrading, alternative and mainstream media, nonprofit management, urban planning, and dynamism.
Theresa Williamson received her Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and has published articles in Progressive Planning, The Journal of Urban Technology, and Cidadania.org. Williamson is the founder and executive director of Catalytic Communities and received her undergraduate degree from Swarthmore in Biological Anthropology.
CatComm has been working extensively around issues of forced evictions as Rio prepares for the Olympics.
Sponsored by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, Peace and Conflict Studies, Alumni Relations, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and Latin American Studies
