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The Colombian Studies: Past, Present and Futures initiative presents , Untold Histories of the American Divide , by Franz Hensel, professor of history at Universidad del Rosario, Colombia.
Moderated by Dylon Robbins, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University. This event is part of the Faculty Working Group series hosted at CLACS in collaboration with NYU Wagner and Universidad del Rosario, Colombia.
This event is part of the Faculty Working Group series hosted at CLACS in collaboration with NYU Wagner and Universidad del Rosario, Colombia.
Abstract:
The definition how the American continent looks like is at stake nowadays. The contours of Latin America –of what it is and where it is located– have become elusive and problematic, but also politically relevant. A growing literature on the history of Latin America has revealed its conflicting and competing definitions and genealogies. A flourishing Latinx movement has advanced a more complex political agenda, revealing the tensions and fractures, and the explosion itself of what Latino/Latin/Latinx is: from the Bronx, to little, Cuba, to New Jersey, to los Ángeles. The stability of Latin America has ceased to be self-explanatory (if one day it was).
This talk looks at the process of production of hierarchical differences over time and space, as it illuminates how America came to be divided and, ultimately experienced, as two continents –Anglo and Latin/Hispanic. I propose a certain genealogy of this continental distinction, selecting specific junctures throughout the nineteenth century that illuminate subtle, violent, and significant displacements of continental markers of difference –and the imperial histories embedded therein. It also tells the story of how Hispanic and Latin reflected competing visions of the Hispanic past and the American future, as they served different actors to advance political and cultural agendas and to imagine forms of continental imagination and solidarity. In short, this is a series of stories of the making of a hemisphere in a nation-building era, and of how hemispheric distinctions were woven together, and apart.
About the Speakers:
Franz Hensel currently serves as professor of history at Universidad del Rosario. He obtained his PhD in History from the University of Texas at Austin, holds an M.A. in Anthropology, and B.A. degrees in Political Science and History from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. His research grapples with the competing forms of hemispheric imagination in 19th century America, the histories and genealogies of political orders, the moral and sentimental languages in the forging of early American republics, and the historiographical and theoretical implications of categories such as experience, scale, and connection. He has been visiting professor and researcher at Oxford University, University of Turin, and Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero (Buenos Aires, Argentina). His research has been funded by the Fulbright Commission, the Tinker Foundation, the Colombian Ministry of Science and Technology (MinCiencias), and the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, among other institutions. His publications include monographs, edited volumes and chapters and selected articles in selected journals.
Dylon Robbins ( Moderator) is Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University. He has published on Brazilian and Cuban cinema and music, the documentary and materiality, polyrhythm and temporality, spirit possession and political subjectivity, torture, pornography, cannibalism, and anthropophagy, as well as on visual culture and war in the United States in 1898.
Event Details:
This event is organized by the Colombian Studies Initiative: Past, Present and Futures, a collaboration between New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and Universidad del Rosario. The Initiative aims to create an Inter-American hub for research, multidisciplinary conversations and exchange of knowledge concerning Colombia. It supports dialogue, inquiry, and research for US, Colombian, and international scholars, students, NGOs practitioners, and the general public interested in Colombia.