Sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor from an award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Georgina J. Whittingham (B.A. Queens College, M.A. Stanford University, Ph.D. Rutgers University) is Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature at the State University of New York at Oswego. She is the author of the book Gilberto Owen y la crisis del lenguage poético (Gilberto Owen and the Crisis of Poetic Language) published by Mexico's Autonomous State University Press and has published book chapters and articles on Hispanic theatre, poetry and narrative in texts issued by academic publishing houses and journals such as Iberoamericana/ Vervuert/Verlag, KARPA, Latin American Theatre Review, Romance Language Annual, Texto Crítico, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, and Studies in Modern and Classical Languages. Her recent research centers on image and text in contemporary Mexican Literature.

Co-Sponsored by: Latin American Studies Program, Latina/o Studies Program, Department of Comparative Literature, Cornell Cinema, and the Migrations Initiative

Spanish colonial accounts of the former Inka Empire chart a vast political landscape of diverse ethnic polities that were differentiated by language, dress, and custom. The ethno-territorial maps derived from these accounts have significantly shaped how archaeologists describe and classify stylistic variation in cultural practices. Specifically, archaeologists have come to view cranial modification, the intentional reshaping of the head during infancy, as a quintessentially ethnic emblem that marked one “kind of people” as distinct from another. This approach unwittingly adopts a view from the outside and above—outside because it makes an exotic practice legible through the Western concept of ethnicity; above because it reinscribes categories of difference historically politicized by the state. Shifting the focus from ethnic symbol to embodied subject, my research attempts an archaeological reconstruction of cranial modification as it was experienced by those who practiced it. Through a richly contextualized case study integrating historical documentation, archaeological evidence, and biocultural data from human skeletal remains, I show how head shaping practices intersected gender, kinship, and status identities and contributed to emerging social inequalities in the era before Inka imperial expansion (1000 – 1450 CE). Such diversity in lived experience is masked by ethno-territorial models that present the ethnic group as a homogenous unit. In their place, indigenous Andean understandings of personhood provide a better account of how social difference operated on the ground and became naturalized in the body.

Matthew Velasco is an anthropological bioarchaeologist who studies ancient populations of the Peruvian Andes through the analysis of their skeletal remains. His research explores the emergence of novel ethnic identities and cultural traditions during the era preceding and encompassing Inka imperial expansion in the 15th century. To explore how these dynamic social transformations impacted the lived experience of the body and its treatment at death, he analyzes and interprets indicators of social identity, biological relatedness, diet, and health status written on the human skeleton.

His teaching spans the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences, covering topics such as mortuary practice, human skeletal anatomy, forensic anthropology, and human evolution. He is currently developing undergraduate courses and graduate seminars on bioarchaeology, the archaeology of death and dying, and the embodiment of inequality.

Film Overview

The documentary film The River and the Wall follows five friends on an immersive adventure through the unknown wilds of the Texas borderlands as they travel 1200 miles from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico on horses, mountain bikes, and canoes. Conservation filmmaker Ben Masters realizes the urgency of documenting the last remaining wilderness in Texas as the threat of new border wall construction looms ahead. Masters recruits NatGeo Explorer Filipe DeAndrade, ornithologist Heather Mackey, river guide Austin Alvarado, and conservationist Jay Kleberg to join him on the two-and-a-half-month journey down 1,200 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. They set out to document the borderlands and explore the potential impacts of a wall on the natural environment, but as the wilderness gives way to the more populated and heavily trafficked Lower Rio Grande Valley, they come face-to-face with the human side of the immigration debate and enter uncharted emotional waters. The film is in English, with occasional Spanish subtitled in English. Running time: 1 hr 37 min. Streaming details and more information.

Panelists:

Heather Mackey '10, cast member and ecologist. Heather completed a BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. She has worked as a field biologist and conducted conservation research in a variety of remote locations including Kodiak Island, Alaska and the Galapagos Islands, as well as the Australian rainforest where she contributed to research on the behavior of the Satin Bowerbird. It wasn’t until she began her MS research at California State University Los Angeles that she discovered the wonderment of West Texas. Through her two seasons on the Rio Grande researching the impact of riparian restoration on the bird and butterfly communities she’s developed a deep appreciation for the wildlife and the people of West Texas.

Debra A. Castillo is Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Hispanic Studies, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University. She is past president of the international Latin American Studies Association. She specializes in contemporary narrative and performance from the Spanish-speaking world (including the United States), gender studies, comparative border studies, and cultural theory. Her most recent books include Mexican Public Intellectuals (with Stuart Day), South of the Future: Speculative Biotechnologies and Care Markets in South Asia and Latin America (with Anindita Banerjee) and The Scholar as Human (with Anna Sims Bartel). She has a longstanding collaboration with Teatrotaller, the Cornell Latino/a theater troupe.

Sergio Garcia-Rios, Assistant Professor of Government and Latina/o Studies, Cornell University. Sergio was born and raised in Durango, México, "but I consider El Paso, TX my second home, a fronterizo by choice." His research investigates the formation and transformation of Latino identities as well as the political implications of these transformations. Other academic interests include issues related to Latinos and the Voting Rights Act, border issues and border research, and the politics of Mexico.

Panel Moderator: John W. Kennedy, PhD Candidate in Romance Studies

Sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor from an award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Cornell Cinema, Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge (part of Global Cornell), and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

2019 > USA > Directed by Ben Masters
With Heather Mackey '10, Ben Masters, Filipe Deandrade, Austin Alvarado, Jay Kleberg
This spectacularly photographed documentary follows five friends on an immersive adventure through the unknown wilds of the Texas borderlands as they travel 1200 miles from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico on horses, mountain bikes, and canoes. They set out to document the borderlands and explore the potential impacts of a border wall on the natural environment, but as the wilderness gives way to the more populated and heavily trafficked areas, they come face-to-face with the human side of the immigration debate. One of the adventurers is Heather Mackey, who earned her BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell 2010. She has worked as a field biologist and done conservation research, and spent two seasons on the Rio Grande researching the impact of riparian restoration on bird and butterfly communities. Cosponsored by Cornell's Migrations Initiative and the Einaudi Center. More at theriverandthewall.com
1 hr 49 min

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