Agents of Change: Latin American Women as Cultural Ambassadors during World War II
When and Where
Speakers
Description
We are delighted to welcome professor Vanesa Miseres for a visit to our department. Join us for a public lecture, open to the general public, offered during her visit.
About the Presentation:
This presentation will analyze the crossings between antifascist politics and culture in the work and exchanges among Latin American women intellectuals such as Gabriela Mistral and Victoria Ocampo during and after World War II. The war in Europe altered Latin American socio-political parameters and forced these authors to redraw the map of Western civilization by placing Latin American women and their work as cultural agents rooted in feminist principles at the center. Through their cultural endeavors, Mistral and Ocampo were able to shift power dynamics and created a political impact in the region beyond the symbolic domain. As “agents of change” these authors worked in the dissemination of a gendered americanismo in the Western World while discussing in essays, letter, and conferences the failure of European democracy.
About the Presenter:
Vanesa Miseres is an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame and an award-winning academic writer. She specializes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Latin American literature, with an emphasis on South America. Her areas of research are travel writing, war literature, women writers, gender, cultural, and food studies. Her work has appeared in academic journals such as Chasqui, MLN, Letras Femeninas, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, LARR, Revista Hispánica Moderna, among others.
Her first book, Mujeres en tránsito: viaje, identidad y escritura en Sudamérica (1830-1910) won the 2018 Alfredo Roggiano Prize for Latin American Literary Criticism (IILI) and also received Honorable Mention for the Victoria Urbano Critical Monograph Prize by the Association of Gender & Sexuality Studies (formerly AILCFH). Professor Miseres received the 2022 LARR–University of Florida Article Award for her article “Materiales de viaje: La función de los objetos en las fotografías, ensayos y diario personal de Alice Dixon Le Plongeon en Yucatán” published in LARR (Latin American Research Review) volume 56, the interdisciplinary journal by LASA (Latin American Studies Association).
Please note: To register, please email Claudia Vazquez-Caicedo to the email address found below.