Our First Year with Mellon
- Person Association: Lauria-Santiago, Aldo
Dear interns and collaborators of the Rutgers/Puerto Rico Archival Collaboration (PRAC),
It has been a year since the Mellon Foundation partnered with our work and allowed us to expand it. We now have over 45 “regular” interns working year-round on the various collections we collaborate with. Tomorrow, ten summer interns will begin, many of them coming from the United States and supported by PRAC. We have a large group of PRAC “graduates” who have gone on to study outside Puerto Rico or moved on to other jobs. And we have a waiting list of young people who have applied to participate in PRAC.
We have accomplished a lot.
We’ve expanded our collaboration to several archives and collections, while others are still in negotiation. We’ve recovered from some setbacks such as NEH budget cuts and their impact on the Puerto Rican Foundation for the Humanities. We’ve had to revise some policies, and others will continue to be adjusted as we go. Dozens of collections have been organized and thousands of items digitized. We’ve offered workshops and training sessions, and collaborated with researchers from various generations.
This summer, we will focus on the following initiatives:
- In August, we’ll publish several blogs written by interns.
- In July, we’ll host a lunch for the interns.
- In August, we’ll hold a reception in honor of Hilda T. Ayala, Director of the General Archive of Puerto Rico.
- StoryMaps and Omeka workshops.
- And our own book series: rescued theses published as “Lost Books.”
In the coming year, we hope to develop these programs:
- A Digital Humanities project based on maps and the presentation of historical data in a model that combines timelines and maps.
- Refining our mentoring of interns and promoting their professional development.
- Workshops with experienced historians.
- Incorporating new cameras into the digital workflow.
- Republishing our digital library in a more professional and accessible format.
- Publishing more detailed exhibitions with documents and document analysis.
- An added focus on analyzing and promoting the use of the collections we work with.
- Interpretative articles by renowned Puerto Rican historians.
Our main challenge is that we’ve processed so much material that we haven’t had time to pause, analyze, and promote the use of these materials.
I want to thank everyone for the work and support you’ve given to Rutgers/PRAC, especially the professors, archivists, and librarians who, in various capacities, manage interns or advise PRAC. Our staff—Sofia Feliciano, Paula Roque, Victor Gonzalez Sosa, and Niharika Pathak—have handled different aspects of the work with impressive skill and professionalism. Without them, none of this would be possible.
I invite you to continue participating in, supporting, and helping to bring visibility to this important work. And please visit our website regularly for details on all of these efforts: prac.rutgers.edu
Aldo A. Lauria Santiago
Director
Professor
Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Camilla Townsend hosts "The Cantares Mexicanos at the Library of Congress" conference
As part of her term as Kislak Chair for the Study of the History and Cultures of the Early Americas at the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, Rutgers History Professor Camilla Townsend hosted "The Cantares Mexicanos at the Library of Congress" conference. The conference, held on May 8th and 9th, was attended by History Ph.D. candidate Joshua Anthony and two of Townsend's former students: Peter Sorensen, now an assistant professor in History at Hong Kong Baptist University, and Tara Malanga, assistant teaching professor in the Writing Program here at Rutgers.
Like the other Kislak Workshops, there was a big focus on bringing scholars from around the world to discuss an important topic, which in this case was Cantares Mexicanos, a collection of Nahuatl songs performed in the late Aztec Empire and early colonial Mexico. In addition to Peter Sorensen from China, there were multiple scholars from Mexico and one from Poland. Participants of the conference also got a behind-the-scenes tour of the Library of Congress and its Conservation Division.
Marcy Schwartz publishes new book "Páginas públicas: Leer en el paisaje callejero de América Latina"
Marcy Schwartz, a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese who specializes in 20th century Latin American literature and culture, has recently published Páginas públicas: Leer en el paisaje callejero de América Latina, the Spanish translation of her 2018 book Public Pages: Reading along the Latin American Streetscape.
Páginas públicas explores literary reading programs in urban areas that are open to the public and prompt collective reading experiences. From institutional programming by municipalities to grassroots initiatives, through short story contests with over 50,000 entries every year to handmade books bound in reused cardboard with colorful painted covers, reading becomes a community endeavor that intervenes in and relies on urban infrastructure. Beyond the confines of libraries and schools, the initiatives discussed in the book occupy the streets and reveal how urban plazas, parks, public transportation systems, even soccer stadiums become arenas for distributing books; billboards fill with poetry and short stories' and food markets become scenarios for free books, literary fairs, book swaps; all promoting new conversations among readers. As a reaction to neoliberal economic policies, these programs in Latin American cities since 2000 demonstrate a reinvigorated public sphere through a reinvestment in public space. The book highlights reading initiatives in cities in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Argentina that promote convivencia and focus on enhancing interpersonal interactions after periods of political violence, censorship, and dictatorship. A surge in this kind of public reading programming over the last twenty-five years invites readers of all kinds to engage in local culture and with each other through literature.
Schwartz will be giving presentations on the book this summer in Chile at the Biblioteca Nacional, the Argentine Nacional Universities of Tucuman, Cordoba, and San Martin, and the Catholic University of Uruguay. An excerpt of the book is available for free online at https://www.eduvim.com.ar/descargas/paginas-publicas/.
Nathan Darmiento wins CLAH James R. Scobie Award
Nathan Darmiento won the James R. Scobie Award from the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH). This grant is designed to fund a pre-dissertation research trip dealing with any facet in Latin American history. Darmiento will be using these funds for a summer in Mexico City's Archivo General de la Nación where he plans to research presidential files, agrarian records, and national security archives related to the Lacandón jungle in the second half of the 20th century. Darmiento will also visit Mexico's foreign ministry archive and look into their records on the Mexico-Guatemala borderland.
Evelyn Autry publishes new article: "Insurgent Memories of Armed Struggle: Self-Representation by Female Ex-combatants in Peru"
Evelyn Autry's article "Insurgent Memories of Armed Struggle: Self-Representation by Female Ex-combatants in Peru" has been published by Duke Press in the Meridians special issue "Indigenous Feminisms across the World: Part 2", which exposes, challenges, and actively resists contemporary (i.e., settler) colonial realities. Autry's article presents testimonies from former combatant women incarcerated for treason to examine how they represent themselves as complex victims and survivors of gender-based violence during Peru’s internal armed conflict (1980–2000). To this day, nationalist narratives and political discourses position these women as absent from society, denying them not only existence but the possibility to claim victimhood and redress. By including censored voices from complex victims/perpetrators and self-representations that register the labors of memory, this study disputes the normalization and acceptance of torture against women identified as Indigenous, campesinas, and insurgents. Autry contends that the narration of ex-combatant herstories of war visibilizes the insufficiency of Peru’s legal system to address cases of human rights violations, opens spaces from which imprisoned women question victim/perpetrator binaries, and complicates memory politics in Peru.
Evelyn Autry's article can be found here.