Mano a Mano: Mexican Culture Without Borders presents: MIXTECOS in New York Language and Identity Saturday, April 17, 2010 from 2 - 3:30 pm
Leslie A. Martino-Velez, PhD candidate, Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center Flor de María Eilets, Workforce Coordinator, Little Sisters of the Assumption Reyna González, Mixteco Translator for Legal and Health Care systems
This panel discussion will explore issues of language, expression and identity among the Mixteco community in New York City. These estimated 25,000 indigenous migrants bring a rich and complex history of language diversity as part of their transborder experience. Migrants to New York, who have settled primarily in East Harlem, Staten Island, the Bronx and the Upper West Side come mostly from the Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. They face special challenges in the areas of education and social services. A panel of experts and community members will look at the unique situation of this special migrant community. Our goal is give visitors a deeper understanding of the diversity within the migrant population, while emphasizing the common threads that connect immigrants and indigenous communities throughout our region.
National Museum of the American Indian in New York
One Bowling Green (between Broadway and State Streets) www.manoamano.us
The Bildner Center’s Mexican Studies Group cordially invites you to the following event: Mexico Colloquium Lucha Libre, Superheroes, and Mexican Identity Tuesday, April 27, 2010, 4:00 PM
“Lucha Libre and Mexican National Identity” Heather Levi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Temple University
"Blood, Science, Religion, Authority and Mental Control in Eight Movies of El Santo" Carlos Aguasaco, Spanish Lecturer, City College of New York, CUNY
Commentary by renowned cultural historian Ricardo Pérez Montfort Edmundo O'Gorman Visiting Scholar, Columbia University; Professor of History, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Research Professor, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS)
WHERE: The Graduate Center, Rooms 9206/9207 365 Fifth Avenue (@ 34th Street) PLEASE RESERVE by sending e-mail to mexicostudy@gc.cuny.edu.
About the Speakers:
Heather Levi is a cultural anthropologist and an assistant professor of anthropology at Temple University. She received a BA in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts in 1990, and a PhD (also in anthropology) in 2001 from New York University. The general focus of Levi's research is on the relationship between performance practices, the global and local contexts from which they emerge, and the political uses to which they are directed. She has done ethnographic fieldwork on lucha libre (professional wrestling), and its place in urban popular culture in Mexico City. In addition to observing events and talking with individuals connected with the spectacle, she trained in lucha libre with a retired wrestler and his students. That fieldwork led Levi to view lucha libre as an arena in which to examine the connections between such analytical categories as mestizaje, class, gender, aesthetic values, mass mediation, and the state. It resulted in the publication of The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity (Duke University Press 2008). She is currently doing research on street musicians and other marginalized performers, focusing on the neighborhood of Condesa in Mexico City.
Carlos Aguasaco is a Ph.D. candidate at Stony Brook University (SUNY) and was awarded the prestigious W. Burghardt Turner Doctoral Fellowship by the State University of New York. He holds an M.A. in Spanish from The City College of New York (CUNY) and B.A. in Literature from the National University of Colombia. Carlos has worked simultaneously as a high school teacher for the Board of Education of New York and as a part time Spanish lecturer at the Center For Worker Education at the City College. He is a member of the editorial committee of "Hybrido Magazine." In the Fall 2002 he won a Blanche Mason Starweather Student Award for his project "Four Discoveries of America in William Ospina's El pais del viento." A sample of his work as a poet and translator was included in Red Hot Salsa Bilingual Poem On Being Young And Latino In The United States (Henry Holt, 2005). His short stories have been included in anthologies such as Pequeñas Resistensias 4 Antología del nuevo cuento norteamericano y caribeño published in Spain (2005). He is the co-editor of a series of anthologies: Encuentro 10 poetas latinoamericanos en USA (2003), Narraciones sin Frontera 27 cuentistas hispanoamericanos (2004) and Ensayos sin frontera -Estudios sobre literatura hispanoamericana-(2005). Currently, he works with www.artepoetica.com, a website devoted to the promotion of poetry originally written in Spanish. His academic interests include the study of twentieth century Latin American popular culture and the residual practices it inherited from the Spanish Golden Age.
Ricardo Pérez Montfort is an internationally renowned historian and Mexicanist. Currently he is Professor of History at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Research Professor at Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), and Edmundo O’Gorman Visiting Scholar at Columbia University (2010). He specializes in 19th and 20th century Mexican political and cultural history, and has published seventeen books and over seventy-five articles on themes including popular movements during the Mexican Revolution, drugs, popular culture, everyday life, nationalism, and Caribbean culture. Recent publications include, Historiadores de México en el siglo XX (with Enrique Florescano) (FCE, l995) Hábitos, normas y escándalo; Prensa, criminalidad y drogas durante el porfiriato tardío (with Alberto del Castillo y Pablo Piccato, CIESAS-Plaza y Valdés, l997, Yerba, goma y polvo. Drogas, ambientes y policías en México 1900-1940 (ERA-CONACULTA-1999), Avatares del nacionalismo cultural (CIESAS-CIDEHM, 2000), Mexicanos entre dos siglos (with Beatriz Paredes y Rodrígo Díaz) (Porrúa-CIESAS- Poder Legislativo, 2003), Expresiones populares y estereotipos culturales en México, Siglos XIX y XX. Diez Ensayos. (CIESAS, México, 2007) and Cotidianidades, imaginarios y contextos: Ensayos de historia y cultura en México 1850-1950 (CIESAS-México-2009).
For updates and further information about this and other events, please visit www.bildner.org (click “Events”).
