2010-2011 Lectures
The Center for U.S. – Mexico Studies cordially invites you to its Lecture Series 2010 – 2011. This year’s series will highlight various perspectives on abstract comics, interpretations on current U.S.-Mexico affairs, regional development and poverty, contemporary Mexican classical music, and international education leadership in Mexico.
The Center for U.S. – Mexico Studies, seeking to foster greater understanding between our two nations, is pleased to host and promote lectures on issues of interest to both Mexico and the U.S. Previous lectures have included such issues as the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), analysis of domestic politics and foreign policy, issues in science and technology, transborder population, and cultural development in both countries. The Center has hosted Carlos Fuentes, Andres Oppenheimer, Elena Poniatowska, Ana Maria Salazar, Monica Verea, Peter M. Ward, Victoria Rodriguez, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Jacqueline Peschard, Araxi Urrutia, Mario Moises Alvarez, Adolfo Sanchez, Thomas Linehan, Larry D. Terry, Stephanie Newbold, Paul Ching-Wu Chu, Douglas Watson, Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, Anvar Zakhidov, Jose Carlos Gomez, Juan Guillermo Figueroa Perea, Jesus Silva Herzog, Robert Nelsen, Rita Lepe, Jorge Volpi Escalante, Enrique Hubbard Urrea, Susan Briante, Coral Bracho, Alejandro Tirado, Monica Rankin, Enric Madriguera, Octavio J. Esqueda, Raul and Daniel Olmos, Ma. Elena Labastida, among others, under the frame of this series.
Ruben Nieto, Soledad Loaeza, Martin Candelaria, Mauricio Hernandez, Ana Cervantes, Darla Deardorff, Charles Hatfield and Giancarlo Mazzati are scheduled in this academic year. The University of Texas at Dallas students, faculty and staff, and those interested in U.S. – Mexico affairs from the metropolitan area of Dallas – Fort Worth, University of Guanajuato, and the Mexican Association for International Education (AMPEI) will benefit from the experience and expertise shared by these scholars.
If you have questions or need further information, please contact us telephonically at (972) 883 6401.
We look forward to seeing you in this series.
POW! La Revolucion! Comic Abstractions, Ruben Nieto.
Co-sponsored by UT Dallas Central Trak and Arts and Technology (ATEC) Program.
Central Trak. 800 Exposition Ave. Dallas, TX 75226, September 11, 2010, 6.00 p.m.
Born in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico, Ruben Nieto graduated from the School of Fine Arts at the University of Guanajuato and obtained his diploma in 1996. From 1997 to 2007 participated in solo and collective shows in Mexico and overseas, and collaborated in art projects with artists in places like Nuremberg, Germany, and Marselle, France. His art work is included in private collections in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Canada, and the United States. He is represented by art galleries in Canada and the US. Since 1997 he has organized art workshops in Mexico and the US. He taught Painting and Digital Photography at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Pennsylvania. He finished his MFA in Arts and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas in the summer of 2008. Currently Ruben Nieto is a PhD candidate in Art and Technology and an artist in residence at Central Track, a residency program for national and international artists from UT Dallas.
An Evening with Homero Aridjis
Co-sponsored by UT Dallas Center for Translation Studies and Dallas Museum of Art.
Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), September 17, 2010. 9.00 p.m.
Aridjis has published 38 books of poetry and prose, many of them translated into a dozen languages. His achievements include: the Xavier Villarrutia Prize for best book of the year for Mirandola Dormir, in 1964; the Diana-Novedades Literary Prize for the outstanding novel in Spanish, for Memorias del Nuevo Mundo, in 1988; and the Premio Grinzane Cavour, for best foreign fiction, in 1992, for the Italian translation of 1492, Vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezon de Castilla. Twice the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Aridjis has taught at Indiana University, New York University and Columbia. In 2005 the State of Michoacan awarded him the first Erendira State Prize for the Arts. Eyes to See Otherwise: Selected Poems of Homero Aridjis is a wide-ranging bilingual anthology of his poetry. He has been an editorial page columnist at the Mexican newspaper Reforma since 1994, writing about environmental, political and literary topics. Homero Aridjis has served as Mexico’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Switzerland, and UNESCO. For six years he was President of International PEN, the worldwide association of writers. Aridjis is increasingly renowned as Latin America’s leading environmental activist and the founder and president of the environmental International Group of 100. He received the Global 500 Award from the United Nations Environment Program on behalf of the Group of 100, the Jose Maria Morelos Medal in Michoacan, the Natural Resources Defense Council Force for Nature Award, and (with his wife Betty Ferber) the Green Cross Millennium Award for International Environmental Leadership given by Mikhail Gorbachev and Global Green.
Too Close for Conflict. Mexico, the Politics of Accommodation to the Superpower,
Soledad Loaeza.
Co-sponsored by the UT Dallas School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences and El Colegio de Mexico.
UT Dallas, Cecil H. Green Hall (GR) 2.302, September 22, 2010, 2.30 p.m.
Soledad Loaeza is professor / researcher of political science in the Center of International Studies at the Colegio de Mexico, where teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on international affairs, political science and public administration. In addition to an extensive publication of articles in international and national specialized journals, Loaeza has published several books and chapters in the fields of political science, history, and international affairs. Her research agenda focuses primarily on the democratization process and transition in Mexico, the National Action Party, the transformation of the Mexican society in the 20th century, and the impact of the United States in the Mexican institutional development.
Duo Argentis, Martin Candelaria and Mauricio Hernandez.
Co-sponsored by UT Dallas School of Arts and Humanities.
UT Dallas Jonsson Performance Hall, October 1, 2010. 8.00 p.m.
Founded in 2007 by guitarists Martin Candelaria and Mauricio Hernandez, this Mexican duo from Hidalgo State has achieved recognition in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. Recent performances include festivals in Ecuador, Greece, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Spain and Russia. Their repertoire focuses on contemporary music of American countries, as we may hear in Sketches, Musica para Dos Guitarras de Compositores Americanos (CECULTAH, 2008), the duo’s debut CD. The performance at UT Dallas marks their second visit to the U.S.; the duo’s state-side debut was hosted by the Colorado Guitar Society of Colorado Springs.
Song of the Monarch: Women in Mexico, Ana Cervantes.
Co- sponsored by the UT Dallas Center for Translation Studies.
UT Dallas Jonsson Performance Hall, October 28, 2010, 8.00 p.m.
Cervantes has been praised in two hemispheres as “a physical, emotional performer with mastery of tone and color” (Newark Star-Ledger, USA), “great interpretive qualities … enormous passion” (unomasuno, Mexico) and “commanding intensity” (MusicWeb International, UK); “it is difficult to imagine a better ambassadress for the music of Mexico” (Independent on Sunday, UK). Cervantes’ approachable performance style, together with imaginative programming in which she joins the traditional repertoire with the music of today, has made her an artist much in demand on both sides of the Atlantic. Song of the Monarch: Women in Mexico is Cervantes’ second international commissioning and recording project. It takes as its symbol the Monarch butterfly, the only butterfly capable of transatlantic flight and whose manner of finding its sanctuary in Mexico every year for the first time is still a mystery: a potent metaphor for extraordinary courage and determination inhabiting a seemingly fragile body. In 1999 Cervantes was a Fulbright Garcia-Robles Senior Scholar to develop repertoire of contemporary concert music of Mexico for subsequent performance in the US; in 2002 she received an Individual Artist award from the Bossak-Heilbrun Charitable Foundation (USA) to continue this work. In 2003 Cervantes was awarded a grant from CONACULTA-FONCA – the Mexican national Fund for Culture and the Arts – with additional support from the Institute of Culture of the State of Guanajuato, to realize Agua y Piedra/Water and Stone: Recent Music of Mexico. The disc features music of seven Mexican composers, three of them women; all but one of the CD’s works are world premiere recordings. Anna Picard in London commented … “For anyone curious about new music from the New World, Agua y Piedra is a must.” (Independent on Sunday, UK, August 2004); and Eduardo Soto Millan in Mexico wrote, “Cervantes makes evident her love and her almost symbiotic relationship with the musical soul and the emotional content of every work.” (Proceso, Mexico, July 2004.) Alumna of Bard College, she names Joan Tower and the late Theodore Lettvin as her most important teachers. Cervantes maintains an active international schedule as performer and teacher and is currently based in Guanajuato, Mexico. Some live performances may be viewed on Vimeo, as well as on YouTube.
Workshop on Leadership and International Education for Mexican Academic Administrators and Leaders, Darla Deardorff and Rodolfo Hernandez Guerrero
Co-sponsored by the Mexican Association for International Education (AMPEI) and the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA).
Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico, November 10, 2010.
Darla K. Deardorff is Executive Director of the Association of International Education Administrators, a professional organization based at Duke University, where she is a research scholar in education and teaches cross-cultural courses. In addition, she is an adjunct professor at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and is on the faculty of the Summer Institute of Intercultural Communication in Portland, Oregon. She has published widely on topics in international education, intercultural competence and assessment and is editor of The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence (Sage, 2009) which features leading intercultural experts from around the world. Other forthcoming books include Through American Eyes (University of Michigan Press), which is a textbook on U.S. American culture, and Bridges to the Future: New Strategies for Internationalizing Higher Education in the 21st Century. She is considered to be one of the leading experts on intercultural competence and international education assessment in the United States, and serves as a consultant on these topics to universities and non-profit organizations around the world. Dr. Deardorff is frequently invited to give talks around the world, including at a recent symposium in Japan and at conferences in Germany, Colombia and Mexico. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2001 “Excellence in International Education” award for the state of North Carolina, 2003 “Young Alumnus” award from her undergraduate alma mater of Bridgewater College as well as “Distinguished Alumnus of the Year” for the department at her graduate alma mater of North Carolina State University in 2006. She was named a Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary in 2003 and she is featured in The Secret of Their Success: How 33 Women Made Their Dreams Come True, Carolina Women’s Press, 2000.
Rodolfo Hernandez Guerrero is Director of the Center for U.S. – Mexico Studies and the Office of International Education (OIE) in UT Dallas. Under his direction, the Center and the OIE focus on increasing and strengthening the academic relation between UT Dallas and Mexico and UT Dallas and higher educational institutions with international prestige, using an interdisciplinary approach to focus on international education, research, and public service programs. He holds a B.A. in international studies from the National University of Mexico (UNAM), a M.A. in Political Science from the Southern Oregon University, a M.S. in Applied Economics, and a PhD in Political Economy from UT Dallas. He teaches courses on U.S. – Mexico Affairs, Contemporary Politics of Mexico, Mexican Political System, and Mexican Economics. Previous to his current position at UT Dallas, he worked as researcher at the Latin American Institute of Economics, Social, and Communication Studies (ILEESCO), the Permanent Conference of Public Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean (COPPAL), the Inter-American Conference on Control of Drug Abuse (CICAD) at the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Secretariat of the NAFTA Labor Commission. Dr. Hernandez Guerrero has published in specialized journals and newspapers and participated in news and documentary T.V. and radio programs in Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Portugal, and United Kingdom.
Fuentes, Chiapas, and the Ends of Identity, Charles Hatfield
Co-sponsored by the UT Dallas Center for Translation Studies and the University of Guanajuato.
University of Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, February 10, 2011, 10.00 a.m.
Charles Hatfield is an assistant professor of literary studies and specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American literature and culture. His current project is an exploration of the intellectual underpinnings and political consequences of the politics of identity associated with Latinoamericanismo. A former fellow of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), Hatfield is currently Assistant Director of UT Dallas’s Center for Translation Studies and Associate Editor of the journal Translation Review. He has edited and translated two books of Latin American poetry-Little Stones at My Window: Selected Poems by Mario Benedetti (2003) and When Night is Darkest: Selected Poems by Miguel Barnet (2002). Hatfield received his PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from The Johns Hopkins University in 2007 and his B.A. in Spanish from the University of Toronto in 2000.
Library Parks: Using Architecture as a Catalyst for Social Change, Giancarlo Mazzati
Co-sponsored by the UT Dallas Library
The University of Texas at Dallas Davidson Auditorium (SOM 1.118), February 22, 2011, 2.00 p.m.
Giancarlo Mazzanti Sierra is founder and principal of Giancarlo Mazzanti Arquitectos of Bogotá, Colombia. Born in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1953, he studied architecture at the Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá in 1987 and earned a postgraduate degree in history and theory of architecture and industrial design at the University of Florence (Italy) in 1991. He has taught at leading Colombian universities and been a guest professor at universities in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Panama. He has won many competitions and awards, including the Urban Design and Landscape category of the 10th Venice Biennale of Architecture Awards in 2006. Giancarlo Mazzanti will discuss his creation and design of libraries and schools in challenged neighborhoods located in what was not long ago considered one of the most violent cities in the world – Medellín, Colombia. In “Library Parks: Using Architecture as a Catalyst for Social Change,” he will outline the city’s efforts and its social master plan to create infrastructure, architecture and community programs to improve the life of its citizens, applicable to current Mexican circumstances. Mazzanti speaks out about “architecture as landscape” and the importance of social inclusion when designing public space.