Spring 2024 Lecture Series
Please check the details of each event for format and location. All events, as always, are free and open to the public.
The Case of Colonia Dignidad: Fascist Aesthetics in Latin America’s Southern Cone
Carl Fischer // Fordham University
- Thursday, February 22, 2024
- 5:30pm Reception // 6:00pm Lecture
- McWherther Library Second Floor Commons
- This event is jointly sponsored by the Department of World Languages and Literatures and the Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities.
Colonia Dignidad was an autarchic, autonomous enclave populated by Germans in a remote part of southern Chile. From the early 1960s onward, the Colonia’s longtime leader—a former Nazi named Paul Schäfer—established a culture of betrayal, surveillance, and child sexual abuse there, relatively insulated from Chilean state intervention. Archival research has shown how the Colonia operated as a "state within a state," using maps and other forms of statecraft that catalogued people and places from above, while glossing over the bodies, knowledge, and nuances that a closer vantage point might confer.
This talk will use the growing body of material about the Colonia that has emerged following Paul Schäfer's death -- archives, legal cases, testimonies, as well as art and literature -- to place the story of Colonia Dignidad within the larger tradition of geopolitics. The ideology of geopolitics, which dates back to the late 19th century, was conceived to systematically manage territorial space from a fixed nationalist and imperialist perspective, and it was influential for Nazis and Southern Cone dictators (including Pinochet) alike.
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"Bossy Women": Voices and Stories from the Early South
Alejandra Dubcovsky // University of California, Riverside
Belle McWilliams Lecture in History
- Thursday, March 28, 2024
- 5:30pm Reception // 6:00pm Lecture
- Maxine Smith University Center Shelby Room (UC 342)
- This event is jointly sponsored by the Department of History and the Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities.
There were so many "bossy women" ("mujeres mandonas") in Florida, or so Franciscan Friar Francisco Pareja complained in 1627. While he was mainly criticizing the Timucua, Guale, and Apalachee women he was trying to missionize, his frustration hints at a much larger story. This talk centers the lives of these "Bossy Women," uncovering the experiences, struggles, and resilience of different women in the colonial South. These often-overlooked stories offer more than new voices and perspectives. They challenge us to rethink what is unknown and unknowable about the past.
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