2024 ISLAA Forum: Latin American and Latinx Art and Visual Culture Dissertation Workshop

ISLAA is proud to present the 2024 ISLAA Forum: Latin American and Latinx Art and Visual Culture Dissertation Workshop at the Center for Latin American Visual Studies (CLAVIS) at the University of Texas in Austin. This events brings together eight early career scholars to develop their dissertation projects and engage with collections on campus. This year CLAVIS welcomes Dária Jaremtchuk, Universidade de São Paulo, and Camilo Trumper, University of Buffalo (SUNY), as the invited scholars. Jaremtchuk and Trumper will deliver keynote lectures on April 4 in person, which will also be live-streamed here.

Dária Jaremtchuk's lecture, titled “Policies of Attraction: Intensified Artistic Approaches between the United States and Brazil”, will analyze the policies of attraction implemented by sectors of the United States government in the Brazilian artistic and cultural environment during the 1960s and 1970s. The purposes of these strategies were explicit: to reverse – within Latin America and not just Brazil – the negative image of the United States, and to make the country a hegemonic reference in the artistic field. To achieve the expected results, exclusive projects and activities were launched, including personal and institutional exchanges, the organization of literary, artistic, and cultural events, the promotion of English language learning, book translations, theater festivals, and the circulation of cultural exhibitions and art shows. This presentation will discuss some cases focused on visual arts. In summary, this analysis aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between culture and politics during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. 

Camilo Trumper's presentation, titled “The Politics of Public Writing in Dictatorship”, and drawn from a new book project, explores the politics of writing in dictatorship. It investigates the politics of writing and re-writing, of producing, circulating, and reading text in a political context defined by censorship, silence, erasure, and exile. It explores often-clandestine, often-unspectacular forms of political organizing and association, mapping the connection between distinct forms of dissent, in Chile and in exile, that were tied together by the political practice of writing, by the line of the pen. It ranges across distinct forms of writing, or inscription—prison writing, schoolhouse writing, street writing, and archival writing. In so doing, it proposes a history of dictatorship and dissent that speaks to contemporary forms of protest in Chile and Latin America. 

The selected participants in this edition of the ISLAA Forum: Latin American and Latinx Art and Visual Culture Dissertation Workshop are: Letícia Cobra Lima, University of California (Santa Barbara), Alhelí Harvey, University of Texas at Austin, Lucía Laumann, Universidad Nacional de San Martín/CONICET, Lynne Lee, Rice University, Lucy Quezada, University of Texas at Austin, Juan Gabriel Ramírez Bolivar, Institute of Fine Arts (New York University), Jennifer Leite Sales, University of Texas at Austin, and Joseph Shaikewitz, Institute of Fine Arts (New York University).

Organized by George Flaherty and Adele Nelson.

Keynote lectures by Camilo Trumper and Dária Jaremtchuk on April 4 from 4:30PM to 6:30PM ET. Livestream link here.

About the ISLAA Forum

The ISLAA Forum: Latin American and Latinx Art and Visual Culture Dissertation Workshop is an annual gathering to build community and professional networks for graduate students who convene at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Latin American Visual Studies (CLAVIS) for three-day meetings to focus on dissertation proposals or a single thesis chapter. Students present their work to the faculty and an invited scholar.

Additional support provided by the the Art History Division Lecture Series and the Office of the Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas in Austin.