Nature itself — in the form of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and California and the Mediterranean Sea — has been enlisted by many nations to carry out enforcement of their borders, writes Tabea Linhard, professor of Spanish, comparative literature, and international and area studies. This strategy allows governments to obscure the role policy plays in deaths of migrants in these hostile terrains. Holocaust Memorial Lecturer Jason De León (UCLA) will detail the stakes at the U.S. southern border on Wed., Dec. 4 in his talk “The Land of Open Graves: Understanding the Current Politics of Migrant Life and Death along the U.S.-Mexico Border.”
The City Electric: How Mexico City’s People Shaped Its Electrified Future
We inhabit electrified spaces. Utility posts and aerial and underground cables surround us. Our horizon is broken down by high voltage towers, transformers, posts and power lines. In her current book-in-progress, “Electrifying Mexico,” Faculty Fellow and historian of modern Latin America Diana Montaño delves into the making of electrified spaces in Mexico City. Her work looks at how ordinary citizens (businessmen, salespersons, inventors, doctors, housewives, maids, and domestic advisors) saw themselves and their city as modern through electricity. Here, she previews how people and power shaped Mexico City’s fate.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Political Movement Overlooked by 30th Anniversary Celebrations
The Fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 is remembered as the inevitable triumph over socialism and the inevitable rejoining of East and West Germany. But just days earlier, up to 500,000 East Germans demonstrated in Alexanderplatz public square to appeal for changes within their government — reunification was not among their demands. In the aftermath of the wall’s fall, writes historian Anika Walke, their vision for the future of the German Democratic Republic is often forgotten.
Looking forward to the Nov. 7–8 colloquium “What Is the Word”: Celebrating Samuel Beckett, one of its organizers, English and drama scholar Julia Walker, writes about Beckett’s minimalism and the particular challenges — and opportunities — that arise when translating his works.
The human fingerprint maps our identity, the ties that bind us, the lingering traces we leave on this earth. As humanists, we explore the durability as well as the fragility of the human condition — opening windows onto worlds near to home and oceans away, worlds we interpret through stories and images, poems and performance, history and narratives, sounds and silence. At Washington University in St. Louis, the Center for the Humanities facilitates the labor of humanists by nurturing innovative research, transformative pedagogy, and vibrant community engagement locally and globally.
The Land of Open Graves: Understanding the Current Politics of Migrant Life and Death along the US-Mexico Border
Women's Building Formal Lounge
Jason De León, Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles - Holocaust Memorial Lecture
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The Land of Open Graves: Understanding the Current Politics of Migrant Life and Death along the US-Mexico Border
Jason De León, Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles - Holocaust Memorial Lecture
Women's Building Formal Lounge |
Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. federal government has relied on a border enforcement strategy known as “Prevention Through Deterrence.” Using various security infrastructure and techniques of surveillance, this strategy funnels undocumented migrants toward remote and rugged terrain such as the Sonoran Desert of Arizona with the hope that mountain ranges, extreme temperatures and other “natural” obstacles will deter people from unauthorized entry. Hundreds of people perish annually while undertaking this dangerous activity. Since 2009, the Undocumented Migration Project has used a combination of forensic, archaeological and ethnographic approaches to understand the various forms of violence that characterize the social process of clandestine migration. In this presentation, De León focuses on what happens to the bodies of migrants who die in the desert. Drawing on the archaeological concept of taphonomy (i.e., the various post-mortem processes that impact biological remains), he argues that the way that bodies decompose in this environment is a form of hidden political violence that has deep ideological roots. Using ethnographic data from New York and Ecuador, he focuses on the families of people who have lost loved ones in the desert and demonstrates how the post-mortem destruction of migrant corpses creates devastating forms of long-lasting trauma.
Jason De León is executive director of the nonprofit organization Undocumented Migration Project, a long-term anthropological study of clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States, and author of the award-winning book The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. He is president of the board of directors for the Colibrí Center for Human Rights and on the academic board for the Institute for Field Research, a nonprofit organization operating over 42 field schools in 25 countries across the globe.
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The humanities center facilitates the labor of humanists by nurturing innovative research, transformative pedagogy, and vibrant community engagement locally and globally.
