Greenleaf Fellows: 2007-2012

Beatriz Colombi
(Dates of Fellowship: January 2-February 28, 2012)

Beatriz Colombi (PhD. Literature-University of Buenos Aires) teaches literature at the Institute of Hispanic Literature and Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires. She has published widely on Spanish American colonial studies, New World chronicles, Baroque culture, Modernism, fiction and essay of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, travel literature, exile, migrations and intellectual history. Among her more recent publications are: Viaje intelectual. Migraciones y desplazamientos en América Latina (1880-1915) (Beatriz Viterbo 2004); and two edited volumes: Cosmópolis. Del flâneur al globe-trotter (Eterna Cadencia Editora 2010), and José Martí. Escritos sobre América, discursos y crónicas norteamericana (Capital Intelectual 2010). She has been a visiting scholar at Brown University (USA), Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil) and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City. She is currently working on Baroque culture in New Spain and transformations in the sphere of the imaginary.

Project: Myths, Emblems and the Emergence of ‘criollo’ Culture of New Spain The project explores the impact of emblematic and mythological literature on the culture of New Spain (Mexico) during the seventeenth century. The main objective is to analyze the impact of these sources in shaping colonial literary culture. The project proposes that criollo intellectuals, such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Carlos de Siguenza y Góngora, made unorthodox use of classical myths and symbols, and created a symbolic world as an alternative to the metropolitan models. The project will focus on the relationship between discursive and iconic representation in Vicerregal Mexico.

Gabriel Ramón Joffré
(Dates of Fellowship: January 4-February 28, 2012)

Gabriel Ramón holds a Licenciatura in Archaeology and History from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos y Pontificia Universidad Católica in Lima, a Masters in Urban History from Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil and a doctorate in Archaeology from the University of East Anglia, England. His research is devoted to establishing a dialogue between both disciplines. He is the author of several essays on the topic, including La Muralla y los Callejones (SIDEA/Prom 1999), “The Script of Urban History: Lima 1850-1940” (in Planning Latin America’s Capital Cities, Routledge 2001), and “Ilustrar la urbe: planos borbónicos de Lima” Yllapa 7, 2010. His most recent essay,“El Inca indica Huatica” is forthcoming in Mundos Interiores: Lima 1900-2010. He is currently Coordinator of the project Colonial archaeology at Instituto Riva Aguero, Catholic University of Perú, and Lecturer in Archaeology in the Social Sciences Department at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima.

Project: The Neo-Peruvian: The Politics of Pre-Colonial Symbols in the Urban Landscape (Lima 1900-1940) My project at the Latin American Library focuses on the artistic style known as Neo-Peruvianism from an interdisciplinary perspective. This style sought to represent national Peruvian roots using a variety of pre-Columbian motifs. During his second administration (1919-1930) President Augusto Leguía promoted this Neo Peruvian style in everything from architecture to opera. At the same time, his government, in colaboration with North American corporations, modified the city of Lima with a series of coordinated urban interventions. A smilar process ocurred in other countries of Latin America. During the inter-war years, along with the homogeneization of capital cities from Santiago to Mexico City, there were various attempts to develop national styles.

I propose to show how the production of the Neo Peruvian style stemmed from a political use of pre-colonial legacies in the Andean region by focusing on three specific events. First, I examine the controversy over the facade of the National Museum and its relationship to the debate surrounding Tiahuanaco, an emblematic place in the border with Bolivia. I then focus on the peripatetic instalation of the first monument to Inca culture in Lima, donated by the Japanese community. Finally, I examine the relationship between the state and archaeological sites and huacas or native monuments. Following the urban expansion promoted by Leguía, many of these huacas wound up residing within the limits of the city. I contend that these monuments are emblematic of the problematic relationship between the government and pre-colonial legacies.

Ana Margarita Mateo Palmer
(Dates of Fellowship: March 1-April 30, 2012)

A fiction writer and literary critic, Ana Margarita Mateo Palmer teaches Latin American and Caribbean Literatures as a Senior Professor in the Department of Cuban Studies at Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Arte in Havana, Cuba. Her work has centered on Caribbean literatures and has greatly contributed to the establishment of a comparative Caribbean perspective transcending the linguistic boundaries that have marked approaches to the region.

Among her publications are: Del bardo que te canta (Editorial Letras Cubanas 1988); Narrativa caribeña: reflexiones y pronósticos (Pueblo y Educación 1990); Ella escribía poscrítica (Casa Editora Abril 1995), which obtained the Award Razón de Ser and the National Literary Critic Award; Paradiso: la aventura mítica (Instituto Cubano del Libro/Letras Cubanas 2002), which obtained the Alejo Carpentier Award and the National Literary Critic Award; El Caribe en su discurso literario (Siglo Veintiuno 2004), which obtained the Award Quintana Roo for Essay on Caribbean Thoughts, and the National Literary Critic Award El viaje mítico: el Palacio del pavorreal (Ediciones Unión 2007), which obtained the Essay Award “Enrique José Varona” granted by the Union of Writers and Artisits of Cuba and the National Literary Critic Award; and Desde los blancos manicomios (Letras Cubanas 2008) which obtained the Alejo Carpentier Award for her novel and the National Literary Critic Award.

Project: Myth and Novel in the Contemporary Hispanophone Caribbean.
I am working on a book on the role of myth in contemporary Caribbean narrative, specifically in the Spanish-Speaking areas of the region. One of the most notable characteristics of the Caribbean novel in the twentieth century is the strong presence of a mythological substratum integrated within the literary universe of these texts. Drawing from a vast and heterogenous repertoire of mythological traditions in a region characterized by intense and complex processes of transculturation, Caribbean writers have creatively embraced this mythical dimension which plays an important role in their writing. I propose to discover the principal tendencies in the appropriation of myth in the contemporary fiction of the region and identify its relationship to cultural identity. My project will center on the analysis of intertextual relationships with established myths, traditional as well as contemporary, within the literature of the region.

Elizabeth Kuon
(Dates of Fellowship: April 1 - May 31, 2011)

With a background in Anthropology and Art History, Elizabeth Kuon is a leading expert in Southern Andean art history of all periods. She has published extensively on mural painting in sixteenth and seventeenth century Peru, queros, city planning, cultural patrimony, and artistic syncretism.  She currently serves as consultant on an architectural restoration project in Andahuaylillas, Peru by the World Monuments Fund and on Southern Andean Colonial art and the history of her native Cuzco for national and international organizations.
Project:  Incas e indios en la producción artística del Cuzco 1900-1950.

Luis Alberto Arrioja Díaz
(Dates of Fellowship: January 27 - February 28, 2011)

Luis Alberto Arrioja received his PhD in History from El Colegio de México in 2008. His research focuses on economic history from the late colonial period (18th century) to the early twentieth century, specifically the mechanisms of peasant economies, markets and other commercial circuits, as well as the agrarian structure of indigenous communities.  He currently teaches history at El Colegio de Michoacán.

The project he will pursue as a Greenleaf Fellow at the Latin American Library is titled Liberalismo, pueblos de indios y tierras comunales en dos espacios del México poscolonial: Oaxaca y Michoacán, 1742-1860 (Liberalism, Indian Towns and Communal Lands in Two Spaces in Post-Colonial Mexico:  Oaxaca and Michoacán, 1742-1860).  His project examines the limits and reach of Liberal policies and political, social, economic and agrarian issues that facilitated or hampered the application of these policies in Indian towns.  He develops this project against the backdrop of broader Liberal discursive forms and practices in Spanish America in general and in Mexico in particular.  

His work-in-progress talk will be held on Friday, February 25, at 3 PM in the Latin American Library Seminar Room. 

Paulo Miguez
(Dates of Fellowship: January 20 - March 20, 2011)

Paulo Miguez is a leading scholar of contemporary Brazilian culture, focusing on culture and development.  He has published widely on such topics as public policy and the promotion of cultural diversity; issues of cultural patrimony; the hospitality business in general, including tourism, but most especially the social, economic and cultural aspects of festivals and carnival, particularly in his native Salvador, Bahia.  From 2003 to 2006 he served as advisor and later as Secretary of Cultural Policy under Gilberto Gil, the Minister of Culture of Brazil.  He is currently Professor of Cultural Policy at the Instituto de Humanidades, Artes e Ciencias and Coordinator of the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Culture and Society at the Universidade Federal da Bahia.

At the Latin American Library, Professor Miguez will work on a project titled Singularities and Differences among Latin American Carnivals, a comparative study of the economics and cultural politics of carnival in Latin America and New Orleans.  The project examines the ways in which the different carnival celebrations in Latin America are conceived from the perspective of public policy.

Luisa Campuzano
(Dates of Fellowship: May 10- July 10, 2010)

Dr. Campuzano is one of the foremost literary scholars in Cuba today. An emeritus profesora titular from the Facultad de Artes y Letras at Universidad de La Habana, Luisa Campuzano founded and directs the Women's Studies program at Casa de las Américas. She is also Vice-President of the Alejo Carpentier Foundation (2008), and director of the journal Revolución y cultura. Her early research centered on the Classics; in the past few decades her work has focused on Latin American cultural, literary and intellectual history of the 19th and 20th centuries and on women writers. She has written extensively on 19th century travel writers within the context of broader cultural debates at the time concerning Cuba's future in a post-Spanish colonial era and increasing concerns over rising US influence in the hemisphere. Her books include Carpentier entonces y ahora (Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1997) and Las muchachas de La Habana no tienen temor de Dios: Escritoras cubanas (s. XVIII-XXI) (Ediciones Unión, 2004).

Project:  Viajeros/as cubanos/as a Estados Unidos: siglo XIX / Nineteenth-Century Cuban Travelers to the United States.

Preparo un libro sobre textos de viajeros/as cubanos que visitaron los Estados Unidos en el siglo XIX.  Conformado y analizado el corpus, y revisados los fondos de bibliotecas cubanas, necesito consultar bibliografía no localizable en Cuba: literatura de viajes a Estados Unidos producida contemporáneamente por otros viajeros/as – latinoamericanos y europeos–; prensa de la época –en particular, los muchos periódicos en español editados en Nueva Orleáns–; bibliografía teórica sobre viajes y literatura de viajes; bibliografía crítica sobre libros de viajeros/as; libros de historia y de referencia, mapas, grabados y fotografías que permitan contextualizar lo que escriben los viajeros/as cubanos.

I am working on a book-length study of Cuban travelers who visited the United States in the nineteenth century. I have examined the extant corpus available in Cuban libraries, but I need to consult works that are not available in Cuba, such as contemporaneous travel narratives of other Latin American and European writers who also visited the United States; newspapers and journals of the time, particularly the Spanish-language press in New Orleans; contemporary theoretical works on travel and travel writing; critical bibliographies on travel writing; histories and reference works;  as well as maps, prints and photographs that may contextualize the works of Cuban travelers. 

Alfredo Prieto
(Dates of Fellowship:  March 8 - May 8, 2010)

Alfredo Prieto has a distinguished career in the field of communications, media and publishing, and has written widely on the perception of Cuba in the United States as reflected in literature and the social sciences. In Havana he has occupied key posts on the staff of journals such as Caminos, Cultura y Desarrollo, and Cuadernos de Nuestra América. Since 1997 he is the editor-in-chief of Revista Temas; he is also Assistant Director of Ediciones Unión, the publishing house of the Cuban Association of Artists and Writers (UNEAC), and is a regular columnist for several digital newspapers such as 7 Días (Dominican Republic) and Havana Times.  He currently teaches at the University of Havana at the Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies, and is completing a Master's degree in Literature and Sociology at the same university. Lic. Prieto has been described as arguably the most knowledgeable Cuban scholar living in Cuba specializing in the culture of the Cuban diaspora.

Project:  El ojo que te ve: visiones de la isla en la literatura cubano-americana / The Eye That Sees You:  Visions of the Island in Cuban-American Literature

Este proyecto persigue indagar cómo se perciben Cuba y su cultura en la literatura cubano-americana, sobre todo de los 90 a hoy; es decir, la crisis cubana y sus imaginarios, un tema  no estudiado en la producción académica nacional. Su problema principal es en qué medida en esta literatura se produce una superación de los estereotipos actuantes en la sociedad global al mirar al otro, y si “la condición cubano-americana” logra romper o no con el peso de la tradición. Continuaría así mis investigaciones sobre Cuba en la cultura norteamericana, emprendidas tanto en la Isla como en diversas instituciones académicas de los Estados Unidos.

This project explores the ways in which Cuba and its culture are perceived in Cuban-American literature, especially since 1990s to the present, that is, focusing on the Cuban crisis and its imaginaries, a topic that has not been studied by Cuban academics. The main focus is to examine the degree to which this literature supersedes common stereotypes found in global society when engaging with the Other and if the so-called “Cuban-American condition” effectively breaks with the weight of this tradition or not. My project is an extension of my ongoing research on the topic of Cuba within North American culture conducted on the island as well as in several academic institutions in the United States.

Justo Miguel Flores Escalante
(Dates of Fellowship: February 1 – March 7, 2010)

Mtro. Flores is a doctoral student in History at Colegio de México, in Mexico City.  His areas of specialization are the history of Mexico, regional and political history, particularly the nineteenth century.   He is the autor of several articles and book chapters on political processes and separatism in nineteenth century Yucatán Peninsula and relations with the Mexican state during the same period.  

Project: Sovereignty and Exceptionality: The Integration of Yucatán and the Creation of Campeche Within the Mexican State, 1821-1857 / Soberanía  y excepcionalidad: La integración de Yucatán y la creación de Campeche en el Estado Mexicano, 1821-1857.

The construction of the Mexican state began in the first half of the nineteenth century, which brought with it the uneasy integration of the provinces of New Spain. This is the underlying context of the conflictive relations between the Yucatán Peninsula and the central government of Mexico. Yucatecan historians have tended to regard the political movements of the Peninsula as separatist-independist.  However, my hypothesis is that the majority of these problems were due to the concept of shared sovereignty in order to preserve internal autonomy. I therefore propose a new way of examining these relations and a novel explanation of the beginnings of the Mexican state from the perspective of the región of Yucatán.

En la primera mitad del Siglo XIX se inició la construcción del Estado Mexicano y con ello la difícil integración de las provincias novohispanas. En ese contexto se insertan las conflictivas relaciones entre Yucatán y el gobierno de México. Los movimientos políticos peninsulares han sido tachados como separatistas-independistas por la historiografía yucateca, pero sostengo la hipótesis que la mayor parte de los problemas se debieron al uso del concepto de soberanía compartida para conservar la autonomía interna y propongo una nueva forma de ver las relaciones mencionadas y una novedosa explicación sobre los comienzos del Estado Mexicano desde la región yucateca. 

Denise Pahl Schaan
(Dates of Fellowship:  January 7- February 28, 2010)

Denise Schaan is an Associate Professor of Archaeology at the Universidade Federal do Pará, in Belém, Pará, Brazil, specializing in the archaeology of the Amazon Basin. She is currently President of the Sociedade de Arqueologia Brasileira, and editor of the prestigious journal Amazônica: Revista de Antropologia.  Dr. Schaan has published extensively on ancient Amazonia, particularly on the iconography of Marajoara pottery and society which flourished between 600 and 1600 AD on Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon River. She has also worked on gender in Ancient Amazonia. Her publications include two forthcoming monographs, Sacred Geographies of Ancient Amazonia (Left Coast Press); and Cultura Marajoara/Marajoara Culture. At the LAL, Dr. Schaan will develop a project based on her groundbreaking finds and interpretations of enormous, ancient geometric earthworks in the Western Amazon, near the Bolivian border, which have garnered international attention.

Project: Placing the Geometric Enclosures within the History and Ethnography of Western Amazonia: A Tulane Latin American Library Research Project Abstract

The objective of this library research project is to find both historical and ethnographic information on the use of geometric enclosures (popularly known as geoglyphs), which are earthworks built by Western Amazonian populations 1,000 years ago.  I will research bibliographies related to the history of Western Amazonia, in particular Bolivia and Brazil, in order to determine when and how the region was first explored, which routes were used, which and where indigenous groups were located. Such information will help to fill in the gap of time between the building and occupation of the enclosures and the arrival of neo-Europeans.

Tania Regina de Luca 
(Dates of Fellowship: January 8-February 26, 2009)

Tania Regina de Luca is professor and researcher at Department of History, Sciences and Literature Faculty at Assis, São Paulo State University (UNESP).  She holds a Master's degree in Social History with a dissertation on Mutual Benefits Societies in São Paulo (1890-1930) and a Ph.D, also in Social History, with a thesis on Revista do Brasil a diagnostic to the nation (1916-1925) that analyzed, throughout the press, the positive image constructed about the state of São Paulo in the Brazilian federation. She has published widely on the history of the Brazilian press the use of periodicals as source and object of research by historians. At the moment she is conducting research on the press during the Vargas era, sponsored by National Council of Research (CNPq). She received the John M. Tolman Essay Prize, at BRASA IX in New Orleans in 2008.

Project: The Image of the Getúlio Vargas Government Through the Latin American Library's Collections, Tulane University

Synopsis: The first government of Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945) has garnered considerable attention among scholars in Brazil and abroad. The regime's political and social policies, foreign policy, labor regulations and relations, the suppression of the Left and cohersion of political opposition, as well as the cultural project of the Estado Novo (1937-1945) spearheaded by Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda (DIP) have all received considerable attention. However, the propaganda efforts of the regime targeted towards an international audience have not been widely studied, especially when we consider that the Vargas era was contemporaneous with the Good Neighbor Policy and World War II, which urged the union of the whole continent. In this context, library collections preserved in important US institutions can help determine what kind of materials and information North American scholars had access to about the Vargas regime.

The subject is relevant especially when one takes into account that collections policies that determined the systematic acquisitions of books, special collections and microfilm projects started only in the mid-1950s, a full decade after the period I propose to research. The materials gathered in the libraries most likely came as donations from the Brazilian government and its agencies or they could be a result of professors interested in Brazil as their subject of studies or who had the opportunity to visit the country. My research will identify these books as evidence of propaganda produced directly or indirectly by the DIP, as well as the books published by editors and authors who promoted Vargas.

Danilo Orozco
(Date of Fellowship: March 3 to May 3, 2008)

Dr. Orozco is professor, researcher and consultant at the Instituto Cubano de la Música and at the Universidad de las Artes (ISA) in Habana, Cuba. He also directs the Taller Musicológico Multitemático de la Habana for advanced students and scholars. He has published five books and many articles on Cuban and global music, links between Classical European and Latin American music and, more recently, on music and culture within the framework of globalization and post-modernity.

Project: Interacción músico-cultural entre Nueva Orleans, EEUU y Cuba, a partir del siglo XIX

Se trata de un estudio acerca de posibles contactos humanos y/o flujos de elementos músico-culturales entre Nueva Orleáns, La Habana y el oriente de Cuba, desde etapas tempranas en el S.XIX, como premisas básicas, pero con eco y repercusiones históricas en locaciones pequeñas como Biloxi-Gulfport u otras como zonas de Alabama, o la proyección ulterior en grandes urbes de USA. Se analisa también el impacto que este fenómeno y sus flujos (insuficientemente estudiados) han alcanzado en la vida musical e idiosincracia populares en el ámbito cubano-surestadounidense-norteamericano así como en el nexo histórico y músico-cultural entre sus pueblos.

Herman Byrd
(Dates of Fellowship: January 28 to February 28, 2008)

Assistant Professor, Belizean History & Education Studies
University of Belize

Project: Belize and the Central American Federation, 1821-1839

In the copious literature on the dispute, Guatemala 's rejection of an 1859 boundary treaty with Great Britain is usually hallmarked as the origin of her claim to Belize. However, recently Guatemala has shifted the basis of her bid: she now alleges that half of Belize came under the control of the United Provinces and of Guatemala once she became independent. Given that recent works have allotted little space to the pre-1859 period, a study of the status of Belize in relation to the United Provinces is needed to fill a gap and shed light on Guatemala 's new contention.

Marco Calderón
(Dates of Fellowship: January 20 to March 20, 2008)

Marco Calderón is professor and researcher at the Centro de Estudios Antropológicos, El Colegio de Michoacán, México. He holds a Ph.D in Anthropology from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa, Mexico City, with a dissertation on History and Political Processes in Cheran and Sierra P'urhepecha. He has published widely on political violence and local elections in Mexico, and on political culture and state transformation in Latin America.  In 2002-03 he was a visiting scholar in History at Cambridge University at the Center for Latin American Studies.

Project: Actopan y Carapan: Dos experimentos sociales en educación indígena, 1928-1933

Con la finalidad de lograr la asimilación de los indígenas a la nación mexicana, la Secretaría de Educación Pública financió dos importantes “laboratorios sociales” entre los años de 1931 y 1933. El primero en Actopan, Hidalgo, y el segundo en Carapan, Mochoacán. A pesar de que el caso de Carapan es relativamente bien conocido gracias al libro de Moisés Sáenz, existen diversas preguntas al respecto; al mismo tiempo, se sabe muy poco de la experiencia de Actopan y su relación con Carapan. Tomando en cuenta ambas experiencias, mi proyecto es escribir un libro sobre la historia de la educación indígena en México en el contexto de la formación del estado posrevolucionario.