[Cas-allemps] You're Invited! CAS Interdisciplinary Research Talk, February 4

[CAS Dean]

Dear colleagues,

I’m writing to invite you to the second presentation in the 2020-21 CAS Interdisciplinary Research Talk series. The CAS IR talks are 35-45 minutes followed by a Q&A session. Since much of our teaching and research in the liberal arts is multidisciplinary and collaborative, the talks are meant to encourage conversation, interest, and understanding across divisional lines in the college. Please join us.

Cultural Heritage Declarations and The Trap of Exclusion
Maria Fernanda Escallón, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Thursday, February 4, 3:30–5:00
Zoom meeting: click here<https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/97180272237#success> to join

Maria Fernanda Escallón is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology with an interested in cultural heritage, race, diversity politics, ethnicity, and inequality in Latin America. Her work examines the consequences of cultural heritage declarations and draws attention to the political and economic marginalization of minority groups that occurs as a result of recognition. Her current book project, based on multi-sited ethnographic research in Colombia, examines the consequences of cultural public policy on marginalized communities and minority groups. Specifically, her research traces how the declaration of cultural practices of Afro-Latino communities as “heritage of humanity” may further marginalize already vulnerable community members and leave structural racial inequities intact.

Talk abstract: To what extent has formal recognition of Afro-descendants’ “cultural heritage” further marginalized Black communities in Colombia? In 2005 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the cultural practices of the Afro-Colombian people of San Basilio de Palenque––known as Palenqueros––as “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” Though in principle the declaration elevated the culture and history of all Palenqueros, in practice, many experienced the heritage declaration as a form of exclusion—from power, from social networks, from frameworks of expertise, from opportunity, and from systems of authority. In this talk, I examine a group of Palenqueras working as fruit vendors on the streets of Cartagena. These women felt exploited by and excluded from the heritage recognition process, which popularized their image as an icon of heritage tourism, without providing any tangible financial benefit. I examine the disconnect that exists between Palenqueras’ public image and their lived experience in order to trace how the heritage declaration became both an opportunity for and an obstacle to their socio-economic mobility. Rather than promote equity and inclusion, my findings reveal how heritage allowed gendered and racialized histories of dispossession to become sanitized stories of cultural difference.
This promises to be an interesting talk and discussion on February 4. I hope you will join us and mark your calendars for the whole series, listed below.

Best regards,

Bruce

Bruce Blonigen
Tykeson Dean

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CAS Interdisciplinary Research Talks
2020-2021
All talks are from 3:30 – 5:00

FALL
October 14      Erin Beck, Associate Professor of Political Science
                        Insiders’ Accounts of Guatemala’s Specialized Violence Against Women Courts
                        View recorded talk<https://uoregon-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/lisa_uoregon_edu/ET_BminzCTJHrdyuPbF04LUBnuQdGd8ViN_bNOYJbDCYhA?e=qg5aeN>

WINTER
February 4       Maria Fernanda Escallón, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
                        Heritage and the Trap of Visibility
                        Zoom link<https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/97180272237#success>

March 3           Brendan Bohannan, Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology
                        Interdisciplinary Explorations of the Microbial World
                        Zoom presentation

SPRING
Date tba          Thanh Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science
                        Title tba
                        Zoom presentation

Date tba          Michael Allan, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature
                        Title tba
                        Zoom presentation

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