Spring 2009 Hispanic Caribbean Lecture Series
200 McKenna Hall
February 19, March 19, April 1 (112 McKenna), April 15
All lectures at 4:00 pm

The Institute for Latino Studies is pleased to announce its spring 2009 lecture series entitled “Caribbean Flights: From the First Colonial Cities in America to Metropolis USA/Vuelos Caribeños: Desde los primeros asientos europeos hasta la metrópolis norteamericana.” This series of lectures, featuring distinguished nationally and internationally known scholars, will be the Institute’s second lecture series devoted to examining the cultural, political, and social consequences of Hispanic Caribbean migration.

The series will open on February 19 with a lecture by Arlene Dávila, professor of anthropology at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, New York University, entitled “Knocking Down the Walls: The Fight for Latino Cultural Equity in NYC.” Dávila examines the struggle by Latinos and African Americans in New York City to assert cultural equity in arts funding, as they defend their cultural institutions from neoliberal and privatizing forces and government cuts.

The series will continue on March 19 with a lecture by Efrén Rivera Ramos, professor of law and former dean of the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, who will speak on “Territory, Citizenship, and Rights: The Challenges of Overcoming American Colonialism in Puerto Rico.”

On April 1 Jalil Sued Badillo, professor and chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies, General Social Sciences Department at the University of Puerto Rico, will speak on “Puerto Rico Insular Identities on the March.”

The closing lecture will be delivered on April 15 by Ramona Hernández, professor of sociology and director of the Dominican Studies Institute at the City University of New York. Hernández will speak on “Dominicans in the United States: From the Almost Anonymous Few to the Recognized Many.”

Lectures will be held in 200 McKenna Hall, with the exception of the April 1 lecture (112 McKenna Hall).

The series is cosponsored by the Henkels Lecture Series, the Graduate School, the College of Arts and Letters Office of Undergraduate Studies, the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

For further information about the series contact Yolanda Lizardi Marino, Director, Academic Affairs, Institute for Latino Studies at ymarino@nd.edu or (574) 631-0940; for more details about the speakers please visit our website at latinostudies.nd.edu/events/academic.

Lecturer Information

Arlene Dávila

Arlene Dávila, professor of anthropology at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, New York University, is a cultural anthropologist interested in urban and ethnic studies, the political economy of culture and media, and consumption studies. She holds a PhD from City University of New York.

Dávila is the author of Latino Spin: Public Image and the Whitewashing of Race (New York Press, 2008), Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the Neoliberal City (University of California Press, 2004), Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (University of California Press, 2001), Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York (co-edited with Agustin Lao, Columbia University Press, 2001), and Sponsored Identities: Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico (Temple University Press, 1997).

Efrén Rivera Ramos

Efrén Rivera Ramos is professor of law and former dean of the University of Puerto Rico School of Law. His expertise is in legal services and as public interest lawyer. He holds a JD from the University of Puerto Rico; an LLM from Harvard University; and a PhD in law and social theory from University College, London. He is currently a member of the organizing committee of the Seminar on Constitutional and Political Theory in Latin America (SELA); vice president of the World Association of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists; consulting editor for Psychology, Public Policy and Law, published by the Schools of Law of Miami and Arizona; a member of the Program Committee of the recently created International Association of Law Schools; and a former member of the Diversity Committee of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association.

Rivera Ramos has belonged to several commissions appointed by the Puerto Rico Supreme Court that have rendered reports on important issues pertaining to the administration of justice. He received the 2006 Deborah L. Rhode Award granted by the Section on Pro Bono and Public Service of the American Association of Law Schools for outstanding contributions to the cause of equal justice from a position in legal education. He has taught courses and seminars on jurisprudence, evidence, sociology of law, law and social change, constitutional law, and the legal profession.

Rivera Ramos is the editor of Derecho y Cultura (SELA 2007), Tal Cual (2008), and author of American Colonialism in Puerto Rico: The Judicial and Social Legacy (Marcus Wiener Publishers, 2007), and The Legal Construction of Identity: The Judicial and Social Legacy of American Colonialism in Puerto Rico (American Psychological Association Books, 2001).

Rivera Ramos has lectured widely and presented numerous scholarly papers in Puerto Rico, the United States, Europe and Latin America. A published poet and a former professional journalist, he also writes a regular column in a leading Spanish language newspaper in Puerto Rico.

Jalil Sued Badillo

Jalil Sued Badillo is professor and chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies, General Social Sciences Department at the University of Puerto Rico. His work focuses on ethnohistory, the history of indigenous societies in the Caribbean, slavery, cultural history, and colonialism. Sued Badillo holds a PhD from the Universidad de Sevilla, España.

Sued Badillo is the author of General History of the Caribbean—UNESCO, Vol.4: The Long Nineteeth Century: Nineteenth-Century Transformations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), General History of the Caribbean, Vol. 1 (Macmillan Caribbean, 2003), Aguebana El Bravo (Ediciones Puerto, 2008), Dorado Borincano (Editorial Puerto, 2000), and La Mujer Indigena (Editorial Cultural, 1989).

He is the coauthor of Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of Archaelogy and History in Non-Western Settings (SAR Press, 1996) and Puerto Rico Negro (Editorial Cultural, 1986).

Ramona Hernández

Ramona Hernández is professor of sociology and director of the Dominican Studies Institute at the City University of New York (CUNY). Her research and publication interests include the mobility of workers from Latin America and the Caribbean, the socioeconomic conditions of Dominicans in the diaspora, particularly in the United States, and the restructuring of the world economy and its effects on the working and poor people. Hernandez holds an MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and PhD from the Department of Sociology at CUNY.

Hernández is the author of The Mobility of Workers Under Advanced Capitalism: Dominican Migration to the United States (Columbia University Press, 2002), which received the title of Outstanding Academic Title from Choice in 2003. She is the co-author of Dominican Americans (Greenwood Press, 1998), co-editor of Desde la orilla: hacia una nacionalidad sin desalojos (Editorial La Trinitaria, 2004), Dominican New Yorkers: A Socio-Economic Profile (CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, 1998), and the author of several book chapters and journal articles including Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition (Notre Dame University Press, 1996), “Beyond Homeland Politics: Dominicans in Massachusetts” in Latino Political Representation: Struggles, Strategies, and Prospects, edited by Carol Hardy-Fanta and Jeffrey Gerson (2001), “Dominicans and their Negritude” in Blacks in the Caribbean: The Struggle for Freedom, edited by Alan West (Greenwood Press, 2002), and “On the Age Against the Poor: Migration and Deportation of Dominicans” in the Journal of Social Work Practice with Immigrants and Refugees (Fall issue).