We would like to invite you to participate in the following panel for the 2009 Latin American Studies Association June 11-14, 2009, meeting in Rio de Janeiro on “Rethinking Inequalities”.

Seeing the City: The Politics of Vision and Visual Representation in the Modern Latin American Metropolis

This panel seeks to re-examine the history of urban political change and political mobilization in modern Latin America through the lens of visual culture. Presenters examine the relationship between urban political discourse and diverse forms of urban visual representation including, but not limited to, film, photography, performance art and public art. Although Latin Americanists have started to pay increasing attention to both visual culture and public space in cities, the relationship between visions for and visual representation of urban environments has remained elusive. Thus, one of our central concerns is to examine the intersection between urban planning and reform, public space, visual culture and political mobilization. Working from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, panelists define politics and political actions broadly, in an attempt to understand visual practice and representation as political. Focusing on visual culture, then, this inter-disciplinary panel seeks to broaden our understanding of urban politics in 19th and 20th century Latin America. Congress Theme Latin America has long been known as the world region with the highest levels of inequality, yet the degree and nature of inequalities vary across the domains of economics, politics and culture. The struggle to overcome inequalities has engendered social movements for centuries, and today as in various moments in the past has motivated interventions by policymakers. Many of these efforts have not been without impact, and their achievements may be underestimated by scholars and citizens alike. Yet by all accounts the distribution of assets and power remains fundamentally unequal even as the region undergoes profound changes in its social and economic structures, political institutions and cultural norms. Neither theory nor practice has grasped adequately the complexities of Latin America’s inequalities or the factors that sustain or undermine them over time. Understanding of inequalities requires insights from disciplines across the social sciences and humanities, and demands attention to the circumstances and strategies of the rich as well as the poor, of the privileged as well as the subaltern.
Format: Papers circulated in advance. Presentations of 15-20 minutes each in roundtable discussion. Please notify us at this email jessica.stites-mor@ubc.ca of your interest by March 15. We would need a tentative paper title and a 50-word description at that time. Co-ordinators:
Jessica Stites Mor, University of British Columbia- Okanagan Camilo Trumper, University of California-Berkeley

Information about the congress can be found at http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/congress/about.html