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Spring
2006 Events:
From La China
Poblana to Alberto Fujimori: The Asian Diaspora in Latin
America and the Caribbean.
 Tuesday,
March 7, 7-9pm Held Lecture Hall, 304 Barnard Hall;
reception in James Room
Asians began
appearing in Latin America by the 17th century, along with
varieties and quantities of Asian arts and crafts, everyday
consumer goods for the common people, and luxury goods for
the rich. The annual Manila galleon trade assured regular
contact between Asia and Spanish America, which sent huge
amounts of silver to China, source of the bulk of the trade
items. Who were these very early migrants, and how did one
of them become the inspiration for the national symbol of
modern Mexican womanhood, la china poblana? Centuries
later, a son of Asian immigrants, Alberto Fujimori, was
elected president of Peru; but after serving ten tumultuous
years, he fled to his ancestral homeland, Japan, a fugitive
from the law of his birthplace, Peru. In between la china
poblana and Fujimori, how did the Asian diaspora take shape
in Latin America and the Caribbean, how can we map it, and
what are its salient characteristics?
Evelyn Hu-Dehart
is Professor of History and Director of the Center for the
Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University.
She is the author of three books on the Yaqui in the U.S.
Southwest and Mexico, of over a dozen articles on the Asian
experience in Latin America, and editor of Across the
Pacific: Asian Americans and Globalization (1999).
* * * * * *
The Impossible Triangle:
Cuba, the United States, and the Exiles.
 Tuesday
March 28, 7-9pm Sulzberger Parlor
The conflict between the U.S.,
Cuba, and the exiles can be characterized as an impossible
triangle. The host society cannot recognize the exiles’
political goals and at the
same time pursue relations with their home country. Prof.
Pedraza uses the cases of the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961),
the Elian Gonzalez affair (2001), and recent disputes over
performances by musicians from the island in Miami to
explore the sense of betrayal this situation has produced
among Cuban-Americans. In the process, she discusses the
evolution of the Cuban exile community over the last
half-century.
Silvia Pedraza is Associate Professor of Sociology at the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her publications include
Political and Economic Migrants in America: Cubans and
Mexicans (1985) and Origins and Destinies:
Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in America (1996),
co-edited with Ruben G. Rumbaut. She is currently finishing
the book False Hopes: Political Disaffection in Cuba's
Revolution and Exodus, which will be published by
Cambridge University Press.
* * * * * *
Latasha Harlins, Soon Ja Du, Joyce Karlins: Female Crime and Justice on the Urban Frontier.
Tuesday April 4, 7-9pm Held Lecture Hall, 304 Barnard Hall
NOTE: RESCHEDULED TO FALL 2006
On March 16,
1991 Latasha Harlins walked into a liquor market in Compton,
California. Within the course of five minutes, she lay in
front of the store's counter, dying from a single, close
range, gunshot wound to the back of her head. Eight months
later, a superior court judge determined that her assailant,
found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, would not serve jail
time. Her judgment fueled the flames of the 1992 L.A.
riots. This is the story of how the lives of three female
immigrants in Los Angeles--a poor, African American high
school freshman; a middle-aged, naturalized Korean American
shopkeeper's wife; and a relatively young, affluent European
American judge--intersect and explode, creating an
astonishing chapter in contemporary urban history. Their
"diversity," manifest by their racial, class and
generational affiliations or identities and "differences,"
evoke the "female side" to America's fundamentally
conflicted relationship with "others". The circumstances of
their "intersection" unveil female immigrant status and
struggles not traditionally discussed in a comparative
framework.
Brenda Stevenson is Professor of History, and recent
Department Chair, at UCLA. She is the author of Life in
Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South
(Oxford University Press, 1996), various other studies, and
is currently working on two books: “Fanny's Kin: Slave
Girls and Women in the American South, 1619-1865” and “All
Our's Daughter: Latasha Harlins, Female Violence and
Racialized Justice.”
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Click
here for a list of Fall 2005 events.
Click here for a list of Fall 2004 events.
Click here for a list of Spring 2004 events.
Click
here for a list of Fall 2003 events.
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