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Conference to Examine Latino, Latin American Objects of Devotion
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Scholars, artists and museum curators will examine sacred objects, rituals and visual culture of Latin America and Latinos in a conference at UC Riverside’s Culver Center of the Arts on Dec. 12-13.
The conference, “Objects of Devotion/Objetos de Devoción,” coincides with an exhibition by Mexican-British photographer Alinka Echeverría, whose photographic series “The Road to Tepeyac” captures pilgrims and the objects they carry on their backs to Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City to honor the Virgin Mary on her feast day.
“There’s something about these photos that has captured people’s imaginations,” said Jennifer Scheper Hughes, associate professor of history at UCR and co-organizer of the conference. “This conference picks up themes from Echeverría’s work about devotion, Latin American religion and sacred vision.”
The conference is free and open to the public. Registration is recommended and may be done online. The Culver Center is part of UCR ARTSblock, located in downtown Riverside in the 3800 block of Main Street. ARTSblock is a cultural complex composed of the Culver Center, the California Museum of Photography and Sweeney Art Gallery.
Conference sessions begin at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 12, and conclude with a screening of “Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago,” a 2013 documentary that follows six pilgrims ranging in age from 3 to 73 on a 500-mile pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. A discussion will follow with co-producer Annie O’Neil and UCR art history professor Conrad Rudolph, both of whom have made the pilgrimage.
On Saturday, Dec. 13, the first conference session begins at 9 a.m. The day concludes with the final screening of “Walking the Camino” at 7 p.m. A conversation about the film will follow. “Walking the Camino” also screens at 3 p.m.
The conference features the participation of three Latin American/Latina women artists: Echeverría, who speaks on Friday and Saturday, in Spanish; Alma López, a visual and public artist whose work has appeared in more than 100 exhibitions around the world; and Colombian artist Adriana Salazar, who builds kinetic sculptures.
During the two-day conference national and international scholars will present more than 30 papers addressing many dimensions of religious materiality in the Latin American and Latino context, such as: relics, devotional practice, pilgrimage and iconography, visual and votive culture, contemporary engagements with the Virgin of Guadalupe, transgressive saints, and sacred objects and materials of the pre-Hispanic period. Plenary sessions will include conversations with artists and national/international scholars. One conference session on Dec. 13 will be held in Spanish.
“It was important to us in planning this conference to highlight the connections between Latin America and U.S. Latino experiences,” explained Jennifer Nájera, associate professor of ethnic studies and co-organizer of the conference. “Latino immigrants and their children maintain, challenge, and infuse new meaning into their religious practices and iconographies.”
On Thursday, Dec. 11, Luis León, author of “The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez: Crossing Religious Borders” (University of California Press, November 2014), will discuss the life and beliefs of the late farmworker advocate and union activist in a pre-conference lecture at 4 p.m. At 7 p.m. Teatro Latino will present a staged reading of the Migdalia Cruz play “The Have-Little.” The one-act play is a coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old girl growing up in a South Bronx tenement.
The Dec. 12 opening day of the conference coincides with the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a religious observance that honors the belief that Mary, the mother of Jesus and Mexico’s patron saint, appeared to a poor Indian in Mexico City twice in 1531.
Hughes, who studies Latin American religious practice, said that Mexican and Mexican American religious practices are often stigmatized in the U.S. because of their strong visual component.
“The history of this country is rooted in Protestantism, which has traditionally been against iconography and the religious image,” she explained. “The Puritans did not have an image of what Jesus looked like. For them, the image of Jesus was a blinding light. That has sometimes led to disrespect for Mexican religious practices. The Mexican relationship to the Virgin Mary is very complex and nuanced, but has been disparaged as idolatry. We’re trying to explain that these are complex positionalities. An image can be holy. It is never just an icon. At one point it is God, it’s a painting, it’s a representation.”
Hughes said she was inspired by Alinka Echeverría’s images of people making a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City. The photographer’s series of 300 images of people and objects they carry on their backs to the shrine, “The Road to Tepeyac,” has been exhibited all over the world. It will be on display at the California Museum of Photography through Jan. 24, 2015.
Echeverría was named International Photographer of the Year in 2012 by the Lucie Awards, won the HSBC Prize for Photography in 2011, and has been nominated for the Paul Huf and Prix Pictet Awards.
Her work has been widely exhibited internationally, including at Maison European de la Photographie,Paris, National Portrait Gallery, London, and as part of the Moscow Photobiennale. She earned her M.A. in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh in 2004, and studied photography at the International Center of Photography, New York.
View the conference schedule here.
Conference sponsors are: University of California Humanities Research Institute, and from UCR the Culver Center of the Arts, California Museum of Photography, the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, UC MEXUS (University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States), the Center for Ideas and Society, the UCR Tomás Rivera Chair, the Latin American Studies Program, and the departments of Ethnic Studies, History and History of Art.
Salton Sea threatened by inaction, experts say
By Jim Steinberg, The Sun
RIVERSIDE >> Experts speaking at UC Riverside on Monday say the problem with a shrinking Salton Sea was identified some 50 years ago but the remoteness of the site has partially kept it off the fix agenda.
“Here we are at almost 2015 and the clock is ticking to 2017 and we have no consensus about what to do,” said Mark Matsumoto, a UCR professor of chemical and environmental engineering.
In two years a court order will kick in greatly accelerating the shrinking of the sea.
Gregor Yanega, an ornithologist and academic adviser to the UC Irvine Salton Sea Initiative, said the low population base of Imperial County and the remoteness of the site have made it a low priority in the state’s allocation of sparse resources.
Yanega and Matsumoto were among the speakers at a panel discussion about Salton Sea stainability held Monday at the campus’s Center for Ideas and Society.
Experts have said that not acting will be far more costly than fixing the problem.
A study by the Oakland-based Pacific Institute released in July said that the cost of doing nothing to reduce the shrinkage could range between $29 billion and $70 billion.
A $9 billion state plan to preserve and restore the Salton Sea has been on the back burner for years.
The Pacific Institute Study said that the costs of inaction over 30 years would result in adverse impacts to public health, property values, agricultural production, recreation revenue and the wildlife habitant, especially birds.
Yanega said he has concerns that elevated levels of selenium in small habitant-study areas being created on the edge of the Salton Sea will have harmful effects on bird reproduction rates.
This happened in the Central Valley during the 1980s in water with similar salinity issues, he said.
“Many, many birds will move from the Salton Sea,” Yanega said.
With the low water levels, coyotes and other predators have been able to reach cormorant nesting areas at the Salton Sea.
So they have moved elsewhere, he said.
It may be that 35 percent of the large fish-eating birds in the west will perish with the Salton Sea’s shrinking and the lake experience a die-off of tilapia due to rising saline levels, he said.
“I think people don’t want to see that happen, but how much are they willing to pay to prevent it?” Yanega said.
Officials at the Imperial Irrigation District, which own much of the lake bed, are proposing fees from the development of geothermal power from the Salton Sea be used to fund some of the preservation expenses.
But in an interview, Karen Douglas, a California Energy Commission commissioner said development of the sea’s massive geothermal potential faces many challenges, including how to carry that power to metro areas.
Another challenge is that geothermal power is constant, day and night.
The state is likely looking at a surplus of power during the day, when solar power plants are operating.
The operations of a geothermal plant may only add to that abundance during the day, but become valuable during the evening, when solar power shuts down, she said.
Salton Sea Sustainability Issues Addressed
Sustainability issues of the Salton Sea will be discussed Nov. 10. Photo courtesy of USGS
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Created by accident and once a popular tourist destination, the Salton Sea has been the receptacle for run-off of salt, fertilizers and pesticides from the nearly half a million acres of agricultural land that surrounds it. The Salton Sea Initiative at the University of California, Irvine is a multidisciplinary group investigating the sustainability challenges that face the Salton Sea region.
The Center for Ideas and Society at UC Riverside will host a panel on the ecological challenges facing the sea and the communities that surround it on Monday, Nov. 10, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in College Building South. The event is free and open to the public. Parking permits may be purchased at the kiosk on West Campus Drive at the University Avenue entrance to the campus.
The panel will feature Gregor Yanega, an ornithologist and academic advisor for the Salton Sea Initiative at UCI; Mark Matsumoto, UCR professor of chemical and environmental engineering; and Michael Anderson, UCR professor of soil chemistry.
The Salton Sea is one of the world’s largest inland seas and, at -227 feet below sea level, one of the lowest places on Earth. It is located in a geological depression between the Imperial and Coachella valleys that has alternated between freshwater lake, saline lake, and dry desert basin for hundreds of thousands of years.
The current sea formed when the Colorado River breached canal gates leading into the Imperial Valley in 1905-06. Marine life was introduced and the Salton Sea became a popular tourist destination during the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. It remains an important stopover for migratory birds. However, increasing salinity in the last half of the 20th century has left the Salton Sea uninhabitable by most marine fish.
In 2013 UC Irvine established the Salton Sea Initiative to help address multiple sustainability issues facing the region, among them desalination, biological remediation, nutrient removal, public health issues, economic development, land use, and water allocation.
The Salton Sea panel is part of a series of lectures, seminars and workshops the Center for Ideas and Society will present in 2014-15 exploring “the nature of nature” in a world where the distinctions between what is natural and man-made grow increasingly blurred, said Georgia Warnke, professor of political science and director of the center.
This exploration includes a collaboration with Proteus Gowanus, an interdisciplinary gallery and reading room in Brooklyn, N.Y., that supports artists and non-artists in creative engagement with a diverse public, she said.
“The initiative and the Proteus series will ask the question, ‘What is natural?’” Warnke explained. “The institutions will share speakers and resources in order to examine the premises, presuppositions and concerns behind efforts to restore native plant habitats, to reintroduce wild species into environments from which they have been displaced, to re-create extinct species, to re-create ourselves and more.”
Read original article: http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/25514
Immunologist to Discuss Ebola Nov. 4
Ilhem Messaoudi will explain history of current outbreak, prospects for treatments and vaccines
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – The history of Ebola virus infections that led to the outbreak in West Africa this year and prospects for new treatments and vaccines will be discussed in a lecture presented at UC Riverside on Tuesday, Nov. 4.
Ilhem Messaoudi, an associate professor in the Division of Biomedical Sciences at UCR, will discuss “Ebola 2014: Facts and Myths & Are We at Risk?” at 4 p.m. in Interdisciplinary South 1113.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Reservations are requested, however, as seating is limited. RSVP to bit.ly/ucr-ebola. Parking permits may be purchased at the kiosk on West Campus Drive at the University Avenue entrance to the campus.
The event is co-sponsored by the UCR Center for Ideas and Society and the School of Public Policy.
Messaoudi studies host-pathogen interactions in a variety of viral infection models including herpesvirus (herpes simplex I, simian varicella virus, varicella zoster virus), orthopoxvirus (monkeypox), flavivirus (yellow fever), alphavirus (chickungunya), orthomyxovirus (influenza.
She will provide an overview of Ebola virus structure and how the disease develops, followed by the history of Ebola virus infections leading to the outbreak that has spread beyond West Africa to Europe and the United States. She also will discuss projections for the current outbreak and development in vaccine and therapeutics.
Read original article: http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/25430
Seminars to Explore Diversity at UCR, Southern California
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awards $208,000 grant to Center for Ideas and Society
By Bettye Miller on October 10, 2014
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – UC Riverside’s Center for Ideas and Society has been awarded a $208,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a two-year series of seminars exploring diversity at UCR and in Southern California.
The seminar series – “Advancing Intercultural Studies” – will examine changing perceptions of ethnic, cultural and cosmopolitan identities, the practices of immigrant religions and developments in civic and political engagement, said Georgia Warnke, distinguished professor of political science and director of the center.
As one of the most diverse public research universities in the country, UCR is uniquely positioned to explore questions about the benefits and challenges of diversity, she said, among them, “how do we capture the contributions of a diverse student population, and how do we enhance learning from that?”
Because of UCR’s undergraduate demographics – 42 percent are under-represented minorities – the inclusion of undergraduate and graduate students in the seminars is important in its creation of a pipeline to increase the diversity of American university and college faculty, Warnke said.
“The seminars of ‘Advancing Intercultural Studies’would help prepare UCR undergraduates for the sort of work they will do in graduate school by offering them the opportunity to interact with faculty and graduate students as equal partners in a scholarly inquiry while, at the same time, providing mentorship support for their research endeavors,” she explained.
“And, as colleges and universities in the 21st century come to mirror the diversity of UCR, it will be critical that future faculty participate in developing multi-cultural and multi-ethnic ways of thinking, researching and teaching.”
The first of four quarterly seminars will begin meeting in January. Each seminar will be composed of four faculty members, and four graduate and four undergraduate students, each of whom will write a paper based on research produced during the quarter. The seminars are not open to the public, but a concluding conference in spring 2016 will be held at UCR’s Culver Center in downtown Riverside and will be a public event.
Seminar topics are:
- “Beyond Diversity: Are We There Yet?” – This seminar examines the contours, challenges and opportunities of UCR’s diversity. Through student surveys, interviews, focus group discussions and the insights of student participants, the seminar will explore the ways in which diversity continues to change UCR in creating new forms of research and teaching. Winter 2015.
- “The Public Practice of Immigrant and Minority Religions in Southern California” – Focusing on expressions of religious hybridity and the politics of cultural appropriation, this seminar will examine how diverse minority and immigrant communities in the multi-ethnic urban context of Southern California inhabit, claim and contest sacred and cultural spaces. Spring 2015.
- “Civic and Political Engagement” – Historically, immigrants along with Native Americans and African Americans have had a difficult time exercising the idea of citizens as democratic participants. This seminar explores the question of what it means to be an American in terms of the civic and political participation of immigrant communities and minority citizens. Fall 2015.
- “Migration, Displacement and Movement” – This seminar adopts the perspective of the person on the move and takes advantage of the number of scholars and students at UCR in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Mediterranean Studies, social history and economic theory. Winter 2016.
- Conference – A two-day, culminating event at the Culver Center will be held in conjunction with the Department of Art’s annual Senior Show.
The New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation makes grants in five core program areas: Higher Education and Scholarship in the Humanities; Arts and Cultural Heritage; Scholarly Communications; Diversity; and International Higher Education and Strategic Projects.
Read full article: http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/25098
“Surfing the Middle East” Author to Speak Oct. 22
Journalist Jesse Aizenstat will present Mosten Lecture in Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies
Journalist, filmmaker, author and surfer Jesse Aizenstat will deliver the Mosten Lecture on Oct. 22.
Photo courtesy of Jesse AizenstatRIVERSIDE, Calif. – Jesse Aizenstat, author of “Surfing the Middle East: Deviant Journalism from the Lost Generation,” will present the Forrest S. Mosten Lecture in Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies at UC Riverside on Wednesday, Oct. 22, at 1 p.m. in Humanities 411.
His lecture, “Surfing the Middle East: Finding Your Life’s Work After Graduation,” is free and open to the public. Parking permits may be purchased at the kiosk on West Campus Drive near University Avenue.
Aizenstat is a journalist, filmmaker, award-winning author, and avid surfer. When he graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2009 with no job prospects, he decided to cover surfing in the Middle East as a freelance journalist.
The book that resulted from that experience “is both educational about the politics of the Middle East and adventurous in how it reads,” said UCR theater professor Erith Jaffe-Berg. “‘Surfing the Middle East’ is a page-turner which brings together the unlikely subjects of surfing and politics. Jesse explores what it means to forge connections among different peoples in war-torn regions while catching waves in an unlikely part of the world. As a UCSB graduate, Jesse also models how a recent college graduate initiates a career opportunity for himself by combining his interests and passions.”
Aizenstat’s lecture is offered in conjunction with Jaffe-Berg’s course “Staging the Middle East,” which is offered as part of the Peace and Conflict Studies program, the Middle East and Islamic Studies program and the Department of Theatre, Film and Digital Production.
The lecture is sponsored by the UCR Center for Ideas and Society through a generous gift by Forrest and Jodi Mosten. The lecture series is named for Forrest S. (Woody) Mosten, a Los Angeles attorney who earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from UCR in 1969.
Read full article: http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/24878
Oct. 1 Lecture to Address Ukraine Crisis and Post-Cold War Politics
UCR Provost Paul D’Anieri will assess the possibility of a new cold war
By Bettye Miller on September 18, 2014
UCR Provost/EVC Paul D’Anieri will discuss the crisis in Ukraine in a lecture Oct. 1.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – UC Riverside Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Paul D’Anieri will discuss “Anarchy in
The lecture will be held from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in the Interdisciplinary Building, Room 1128. The lecture is free and open to the public. Parking permits may be purchased at the kiosk on West Campus Drive at the University Avenue entrance to the campus.
Since November 2013, Ukraine has moved rapidly from protest to revolution to state collapse to foreign intervention, said D’Anieri, a political scientist whose expertise is in Eastern European and post-Soviet affairs.
“We can now ask seriously whether a new cold war is emerging, and what that might mean,” he said. “However, Ukraine’s experience in 2014 is far from unique. Rather, it brings together a set of dynamics that we see emerging around the world, including the emergence of hybrid democratic-autocratic regimes, the diffusion of protest, the weakness of states, innovation in information warfare, and the erosion of traditional notions of war. Is this the future of world politics?”
D’Anieri joined UCR on July 1, having served previously as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida. He earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations at Michigan State, and a master’s and doctorate in government at Cornell University.
He serves as the chief academic and operating officer for UC Riverside, providing academic leadership to the entire university, managing day-to-day operations of the campus, overseeing resource allocation, and serving as a member of the campus leadership team. In the chancellor’s absence, the provost serves as the chief executive officer.
D’Anieri’s lecture launches the School of Public Policy Seminar Series – whose speakers will include FAA administrator Michael Huerta on Oct. 17 and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on Feb. 10, 2015. It also launches the Center for Ideas and Society’s public programming for the year, highlights of which include a discussion of the future of the Salton Sea, a roundtable on the conflict in the Middle East, and two “Dueling Disciplines” events: one contrasting the views of philosophy and neuroscience on consciousness and another contrasting the views of dance and religious studies on yoga.
Anil Deolalikar, dean of the School of Public Policy, said the policy seminar series will feature talks by leading researchers and policy-makers on timely and pressing policy challenges facing the region, the nation and the world.
“We are pleased to kick off our seminar series for academic year 2014-15 with a talk by UCR’s new provost/EVC, Paul D’Anieri, on how the current anarchy and unrest in Ukraine represents post-Cold War politics and hot it is likely to affect the United States,” he said.
The Center for Ideas and Society is delighted to co-host this event as part of its mission to engage the wider public in the important humanities and social science research taking place at UC Riverside, said Georgia Warnke, professor of political science and director of the center. “We look forward to additional cross-campus collaborations,” she added.
Read full article: http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/24558