Co-sponsored by Anthropology

The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) introduced a series of state-led initiatives promising modernity, progress, national grandeur, and stability: state surveyors assessed land for agrarian reform, engineers utilized nationalized oil for industrialization, archaeologists reconstructed pre-Hispanic monuments for tourism, and anthropologists studied and photographed indigenous populations to achieve their acculturation. However, far from their stated goals, these initiatives dissembled violence, permitting land invasions, forced displacement, environmental damage, loss of democratic freedom, and mass killings. Mónica Salas Landa uses the history of northern Veracruz to demonstrate how these state-led efforts reshaped the region's social and material landscapes, affecting what was and is visible. Relying on archival sources and ethnography, she uncovers an aesthetic order of ongoing significance, which was established through post-revolutionary projects and which perpetuates inequality based on imperceptibility.

Mónica Salas Landa is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Lafayette College. She is a historical and political anthropologist with regional expertise in Latin America. Her work examines the processes of state formation, nation-building, and the aesthetic dimension of politics in post-revolutionary and contemporary Mexico. Trained as an anthropologist and archaeologist in Mexico, she obtained an MA in Museum Studies from New York University and a PhD in Anthropology with a concentration in Latin American Studies from Cornell University. Prior to joining Lafayette College, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. Her work has been featured in the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Journal of Latin American Studies, Environment and Planning A, among other journals. Her first book, Visible Ruins: The Politics of Perception and the Legacies of Mexico’s Revolution, was recently published by the University of Texas Press.

A Book Talk on Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet

Growing up in Cleveland in the final years of the Cold War, writer Megan Buskey understood little about her Ukrainian family’s traumatic history. It was only well into adolescence that she learned that her mother had grown up in a gulag exile settlement in Siberia because her grandparents had been deported there from their Ukrainian village after the Second World War.

As an adult, Megan spent years researching her family’s experience for her award-winning book, Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return (ibidem, 2023). In this talk, Megan Buskey will discuss the political significance of Ukrainian family histories in light of the restrictions placed on memory during the Soviet period, share what she learned about her family’s experience, and connect their story to current politics, specifically Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Come learn more about our winter study abroad in Cambodia, lunch provided. In collaboration with the Center for Khmer Studies (CKS), Cornell's Southeast Asia (SEAP, Einaudi) Study Abroad program in Cambodia will provide an in-depth focus on the cultural heritage of Cambodia both past and present. This highly interactive course will focus on Cambodian heritage past and present — how it's been created in the past, including the city of Angkor, and how that heritage and history is understood and engaged today. We will visit historical sites as well as museums and other relevant sites, including performances, where history is remembered and engaged.

Come learn more about our winter study abroad in Cambodia, lunch provided. In collaboration with the Center for Khmer Studies (CKS), Cornell's Southeast Asia (SEAP, Einaudi) Study Abroad program in Cambodia will provide an in-depth focus on the cultural heritage of Cambodia both past and present. This highly interactive course will focus on Cambodian heritage past and present — how it's been created in the past, including the city of Angkor, and how that heritage and history is understood and engaged today. We will visit historical sites as well as museums and other relevant sites, including performances, where history is remembered and engaged.