Renowned Chilean Scholar Marjorie Agosín Visits UNM
March 3, 2014
Renowned Chilean scholar Marjorie Agosín visits UNM this week, offering several presentations on campus and in the community.
- "Weaving Resistance: Women, Creativity, and Social Change": Thursday, March 6, 2014, from 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. in Mitchell Hall, Room 122. Note that this presentation will be followed by a panel discussion involving Margaret Randall, Margo Chávez, and Iktemal Jaber.
- "The Exile Writer and the Literary Imagination in the Americas": Friday, March 7, 2014, from 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. in Ortega Hall, Reading Room.
- "I Lived on Butterfly Hill": Saturday, March 8, 2014, from 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) in Salón Ortega. Note that this event will entail both a reading and signing of Agosín's most recent book, a young adult novel set in Chile.
Agosín is an award-winning self-described "poet, human rights activist, literary critic...interested in Jewish literature and literature of human rights in the Americas; women writers of Latin America; migration, identity, and ethnicity." She writes that "my creative work is inspired by the theme of social justice as well as the pursuit of remembrance and the memorialization of traumatic historical events both in the Americas and in Europe. I have written about the holocaust through the portrayal of Anne Frank as well as about the history of Bosnian women during the siege of Sarajevo. I am also a literary scholar and my work has focused on such major writer as Pablo Neruda, Maria Luisa Bombal and Gabriela Mistral. I have also researched and written about the role of women in Latin America during authoritarian regimes in the seventies and eighties. The work of the Chilean arpilleras has been a pioneer work on this subject. I have also written essays, autobiographical memories, and a young adult novel. All of these works have as a unified theme the pursuit of social justice and human rights" (Wellesley College).
In recognition of her corpus of poetry, fiction, memoir, and literary criticism, Agosín has earned repeated literary awards, including the Letras de Oro Prize, the Latina Literatura Prize, International Latino Award, Mexican Cultural Institute Prize, and Peabody Award, among others. She has also "won numerous honors in recognition of her work as a human rights activist,including the United Nations Leadership Award for Human Rights, the Jeanette Rankin Award in Human Rights, and years after she left her homeland the Chilean government honored her with the Gabriela Mistral Medal for Lifetime Achievement" (UMass Boston).
Note that these events are co-sponsored by the International Studies Institute, LAII, UNM Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UNM University College, UNM Department of Art & Art History, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and Women & Creativity 2014.
