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Culture Chat: Celebrating Hispanic & Latine Heritage
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Event Highlights:
Our Panelists for this evening:
Giovanna Montenegro is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies Program at Binghamton University. She is author of German Conquistadors in Venezuela: The Welsers’ Colony, Racialized Capitalism, and Cultural Memory (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022). She is currently working on a second book project on Indigenous and Maroon Populations and Land Rights in the Guianas.
Her research has been supported by a number of external fellowships including the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, the Newberry Library, the Herzog August Bibliothek, the Omohundro Institute, and the American Association of University Women. In 2019 she received the Latin American Studies Association-Venezuela Section- Best Article- Humanities prize for “The Welser Phantom”: Apparitions of the Welser Venezuela Colony in Nineteenth and Twentieth-century German Cultural Memory.” She is a native of Caracas, Venezuela who spent much of her youth in Alexandria, VA before moving to the West Coast. She received a PhD from UC Davis in 2013, her MA from San Francisco State University in 2007, and her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2000.
At Binghamton, she has taught courses for the Comparative Literature and Spanish programs. Professor Montenegro also led a service-learning study abroad course in Cuzco, Peru, and has incorporated community engagement with Saamaka maroon partners in Suriname into her courses.
She remains passionate about bringing the humanities to the public, and has been PI of the Smaller Narratives for a Larger World podcast run by graduate students.
Giovanna is multilingual and speaks Spanish, Italian, French, and German and has intermediate proficiency in Russian and Dutch. She remains committed to providing international educational opportunities for Latinx, First-Gen, and BiPoC students.
George Ygarza is a first-generation popular educator, militant researcher and scholar with a Ph.D. in Global Studies. George's research originates from two points of inflection. From the bottom-up he engages in collaborative research with place-based movements for self-determination and the reproduction of life, particularly Indigenous and urban spaces. One of his most recent projects includes working as an associate editor for the recently published Municipalist toolkit. His other orientation is positioned within the study of postcolonial race and meaning making in state-formation, where he works on examining the ways in which states create subjectivity and territoriality as forms of biopower. George recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and was part of the team that worked on the soon-to-go-live "Dispossession in the Americas" project. Moreso, George works as an interlocutor and translator for Latin American critical thought, his latest project with Raul Zibechi titled, Constructing Worlds Otherwise, was recently published by AK Press. George is a frequent contributor to NACLA, as well as a contributor for ROAR, IllWill, and Truthout among other publications. George is always looking for new collaborative projects around themes of autonomy, postcolonial analysis, and collaborative movement work to advance transformative and liberatory projects.
Belinda Ramírez (they/them) received their PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of California San Diego and most recently completed a postdoc as a Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) Fellow at Stanford University, where they taught various liberal education courses including environmental sustainability, food and culture, and food/climate/environmental justice. As a scholar-activist, they also organized with Stanford’s Environmental Justice Working Group and the Coalition for a True School of Sustainability, worked with the Stanford Food Institute, and served in the Food Systems Working Group of the Stanford Climate Action Plan. Belinda's interdisciplinary research interests deal with the social, racial/ethnic, political, and economic dimensions of urban agriculture and food justice movements situated within the modern industrialized and corporatized global food system. Belinda’s scholarship utilizes ethnographic and mixed methods to investigate on-the-ground practices of local food production, procurement, and advocacy, most especially among BIPOC and low-income communities in the United States and Latin America. In this work, they demonstrate how people living in underserved urban spaces—who struggle with the myriad effects of food apartheid on diet, health, and wellbeing—push for both individual and community autonomy and self-sufficiency through producing their own food and creating alternative food networks. Along with other amazing food justice scholars, Belinda’s work in the urban agriculture movement in San Diego-Tijuana is highlighted in the forthcoming volume Nurturing Food Justice (an updated companion to the well-known Cultivating Food Justice), edited by Alison Alkon and Julian Agyeman. Belinda’s new project will center these food justice/sovereignty and racial justice narratives in their family’s home country of Colombia. Belinda considers themselves a farmer-scholar, having received agricultural training through local farms and community gardens across San Diego and Tijuana. They have also engaged in statewide political advocacy for young farmers through the National Young Farmers Coalition, served as both Board and Food Justice Co-Chair for Slow Food Urban San Diego, and currently serve as a member of Food Tank's Academic Working Group.
Panelists' Insights: Our esteemed panelists will share their academic research and reflections on what Hispanic & Latine Heritage Month means to them. Through their unique perspectives, we will gain valuable insights into Latine culture, politics, human rights, food sovereignty and more, while providing ways to better the communities we have gained this rich culture from.
Audience Q&A: Following the panelists' discussion, there will be an interactive Q&A session, providing attendees with the opportunity to engage directly with the panelists, seek further insights, and contribute to the dialogue.
This discussion promises to be a thought-provoking and eye-opening experience, encouraging dialogue, empathy, and understanding. We welcome individuals of all backgrounds to learn together in celebration of Latine Heritage Month.
Please contact mrc@binghamton.edu if you have questions or accommodation needs.