Janey Program in Latin American Studies

2012 Janey Annual Conference

The Janey Annual Conference presents new research trends in Latin American studies. This year the conference featured current and past Janey fellows from the United States and Latin America in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the program.

Full program

Thursday March 22 2012, 1:00 PM to 8:00 PM

1:00-3:00 First Panel with Former Janey Fellows

Mimi Sheller, Drexel University (Janey Fellow 1993-1994)

Aluminum Dreams and the Making of Mobile Modernities,

Victoria Crespo, Colegio de Mexico (Janey Fellow 2003-2009)

Old and New Forms of Dictatorships in Latin America,

Evan Daniel, Cuny Queens College (Janey Fellow 2005-2006)

Rolling for the Revolution: A Transnational History of Cuban Cigar Makers in Havana, Florida, and New York City, 1850s-1890s,

3:00-3:15 Coffee Break

3:15-5:00 Second Panel with Current Janey Fellows

Melissa Amezcua Yepiz, Sociology NSSR

Katie Detwiler, Anthropology NSSR

Alberto Fernandez, Politics NSSR

Nicolas Figueroa, Sociology NSSR

Luis Herran, Politics and Historical Studies NSSR

Gema Santamaria, Sociology and Historical Studies NSSR

5:00-7:00 Key note speaker:

Javier Auyero, University of Texas at Austin (Janey Fellow 1992- 1996)

A Political Ethnographer’s Sinuous Road,

7:00 Reception

ABSTRACT Keynote speaker Javier Auyero

A Political Ethnographer’s Sinuous Road

This talk reflects on the substantive and analytical lessons learned in a decade and a half ethnographic fieldwork. Political clientelism, its relationship with collective action, the role of clandestine connections in politics, urban marginality and environmental suffering, and poor people’s waiting as way of experiencing political domination: these are the five (admittedly, very broad) topics that, in rough chronological order, obsessed me during the last fifteen years. What did I learn? How do I think we could still improve our social scientific explanations on these subjects?

BIOS Former Janey Fellows:

Javier Auyero is the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long in Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas-Austin. His main areas of research, writing and teaching are political ethnography, urban poverty, and collective violence. He is the author of Poor People’s Politics (Duke University Press, 2000), Contentious Lives (Duke University Press, 2003), Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and, together with D√©bora Swistun, Flammable. Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown (Oxford University Press, 2009). His new book, Patients of the State, will be published in 2012. He received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2000 and from the American Council of Learned Societies in 2008. He was the editor of the journal Qualitative Sociology from 2004 to 2010.

Mimi Sheller is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University. She is also Senior Research Fellow and former co-Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University (UK) and founding co-editor of the journal Mobilities. She was awarded her A.B. from Harvard University (1988, summa cum laude) in History and Literature, and MA (1993, with distinction) and PhD (1997) in Sociology and Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research. She held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for African and Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan. From 1998-2006 she was Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University (UK). From 2006-2009 she was Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Swarthmore College. She has held recent Visiting Fellowships in the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University (2008-09); Media@McGill in Montreal (2009); the Center for Mobility and Urban Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark (2009); and the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania (2010-11).

Evan Daniel received the Janey Scholarship for archival research in Havana, Cuba and received his PhD in Historical Studies and Politics from the New School in 2011. He is presently affiliated with the Department of History at Queens College, CUNY. His research interests include immigration and labor, ethnic identity, radical political movements and revolutions.

María Victoria Crespo is Research Associate at El Colegio de México. She received her PhD in Sociology and Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research in 2011. Her dissertation The Making of the Presidency in Spanish America: Executive Power and State Formation in Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela, 1810-1826, , soon a book (El Colegio de México Press), was awarded the Albert Salomon Award in Sociology. She recently edited Estado y sociedad en el Morelos posrevolucionario y contemporáneo (Congreso del Estado de Morelos, 2010), and has written book chapters and journal articles on Latin American politics and history. She is managing editor of Nostromo, Revista Crítica Latinoamericana.