Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Illinois

On April 20th, 2026 CLACS interviewed Dr. Ethan Madarieta during his visit to the UofI. The interview can be found on our YouTube channel CLACS_Illinois or on our linktree. Make sure you also watch our previous interview with Dr. Silvina Montrul!

Channel link: https://youtube.com/?si=t_qIcol8IuIqL5oA

Madarieta earned his Ph.D. in Comparative and World Literature at UIUC. He also has a graduate minor in Latina/o Studies and a certificate in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies. He is currently an assistant professor of English at Syracuse University, and is on faculty in Native American and Indigenous studies, Latin American and Caribbean studies, and LGBTQ studies. He recently published Land’s Language: On Mapuche Memory, Translation, and the Territorial Aporia with Northwestern University Press. Asserting that the work of critical theory today must attend to an epistemic locality rather than the universalizing impulse of its European intellectual genealogy, Ethan Madarieta makes central to his study the literatures and philosophy of the Mapuche peoples of Wallmapu (comprising south-central regions of what are currently known as Chile and Argentina).

IGI is hosting a Reading and Research Presentations Day, including study hours and three student presentations to be workshopped from 12-2 pm. See the following from

Please join us on Reading Day, May 7th , for a day of studying, student research presentations, and plenty of food to fuel your brain and ideas to fuel your mind!

You can stop by briefly or bring your laptop, books, and notes and settle in for the day!

IGI Reading and Research Presentation Day

Thursday. May 7, Coble Hall, Room 306

Schedule:
9am – 11:45am – Quiet Study with snacks

12pm – 2pm - Student Workshop of presentations with lunch

12:00pm Kaleigh Mueller, Global Studies, The Role of Rhetoric in North Korea’s Juche Ideology

12:40pm Patrick Buchanan, CLACS, Flight, Feuds, and Tavernas, Intimacy between Enslaver and Police Control in Pelotas, Brazil, 1880-1888

1:20pm Sibel Arikoglu, Linguistics, Strategic Code Switching Among Turkish German Bilinguals

2pm – 4pm – Quiet Study with snacks

The University Library has acquired two important and very rare items for Andean Studies, in the Quechua and Kichwa languages. Latin American and Caribbean Studies librarian and associate professor, Antonio Sotomayor has written a post explaining the acquisitions and their importance.

Library Dean of Collections, Tom Teper, and the Head of the International and Area Studies Library, Steve Witt, both lent financial support in procuring these items. The two items will be houses in the university’s Rare Books and Manuscript Library.

For more information about these and other resources for the study of the Andes or Latin America in general, please contact Prof. Antonio Sotomayor at [email protected].

Read the original post here: https://publish.illinois.edu/iaslibrary/2026/04/20/new-special-items-for-the-latin-american-and-caribbean-collection-at-the-university-library/

In Fall 2026 Portuguese professor John Karam will be teaching a class on the history of coffee, with central focus being on Brazil. See the following for more information!

PORT 404 - Special Topics Course - “Café: Coffee in Brazil and Beyond” - Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30 to 10:50 - Taught in English with Undergraduate and Graduate Sections ([email protected])

Coffee is one of the world’s most studied and traded commodities, and Brazil dominated the global market since the mid-1800s, remaining at the top even now in the twenty-first century. With a cross-disciplinary sensibility, this course explores coffee as matter and metaphor, in production and consumption, with some attention to export markets and promotional campaigns abroad as well as rival varieties from elsewhere. Coffee in Brazil is key to understand class and labor formation, environmental destruction and restoration, gender, migration, modernity, nation-making, race, slavery, and more. We will draw upon cultural and literary studies as well as history and the social sciences. INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH. KNOWLEDGE OF PORTUGUESE NOT REQUIRED.

Location: KAM 62 Auditorium, Krannert Art Museum

Speaker: Mayki Gorosito (SPAN)
The talk will be held in Spanish.

Former Executive Director of the ESMA Memory Site Museum.
Expert in memory, human rights, and public policy.
Curator of “Resistance, Memory, and Justice in Argentina.”

The talk will be held in Spanish.

La gestión del Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA, ex Centro Clandestino de Detención, Tortura y Exterminio, supone la articulación de múltiples campos del conocimiento, el alcance de consensos y la participación informada de Organismos de DDHH y sobrevivientes.

En esta presentación se abordarán aspectos vinculados al carácter imprescindible de los Sitios de Memoria, su aporte a la pedagogía de la memoria, al proceso de inscripción del Museo Sitio en la Lista de Bienes Culturales del MERCOSUR y de Patrimonio Mundial de la Unesco, a los desafíos, iniciativas y lecciones aprendidas que se plantearon en el camino, hasta cumplir los 10 años de institucionalidad, a las complejidades y obstáculos para las políticas públicas de memoria a partir del cambio de escenario político nacional, y a los debates que hoy desafían al campo de la memoria del Terrorismo de Estado basado en la desaparición forzada de personas

Una mirada, a través de la historia del Museo Sitio , sobre nuestro recorrido de construcción de memoria, para conocer la verdad, y obtener justicia.

Miércoles 25 de abril, 5 PM, Coble Hall 108

Hablaremos del libro Salvate Vos escrito por Juan Carrá, quien participará de forma virtual. Esta discusión se llevará a cabo en español. Esta actividad forma parte de las actividades que CLACS ha organizado con motivo de la visita de Mayki Gorosito, ex-directora del Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA quien también estará presente.

Join us for a discussion with author Juan Carrá, who will be joining the book club via Zoom. We will gather with participants who have read the book or are interested in learning more about this story.

Salvate Vos tells the story of a family persecuted during Argentina’s dictatorship in the 1970s. It follows Mima Molfino, a widowed mother of six whose children are targeted for their political militancy. As repression intensifies, she is forced to abandon her life and go into hiding and exile in an effort to protect them.

The narrative centers on her abduction in Peru in 1980 and her subsequent murder in an international operation coordinated by the Argentine dictatorship. Through her story and the fate of her children, the book exposes the reach of state violence across borders, the use of misinformation, and the human cost of political persecution. Blending journalistic investigation with literary storytelling, it reconstructs both a family tragedy and a broader history of repression in Latin America.

Film Screening and Discussion with Co-Producer Andrea Tortonese

5:00 PM – Film Screening: Norita (ENG/SPAN)
6:30 PM – Discussion with co-producer Andrea Tortonese (SPAN), who will join us via Zoom following the film
Location: Armory 101

Norita brings us closer to the unwavering determination of an ordinary woman, Nora Cortiñas, to find her son Gustavo and thousands of other “desaparecidos” during the military dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s.

Read more about Norita: Norita brings together testimonies, archival footage, and animation to tell the story of Argentina’s dictatorship. Before becoming the feminist leader she is known as today, Nora Cortiñas was a traditional housewife. Her life changed when the military dictatorship (1976–1982) abducted her son Gustavo, along with thousands of young activists. Ignored by the government, the Church, and the media, Nora took to the streets in 1977 with other mothers of the disappeared. Together, they formed the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and led a powerful movement for justice against a violent authoritarian regime. Despite repression, imprisonment, and executions, they endured and became a global symbol of human rights, resistance, and protest.

Don’t miss out on this Spring 2026 course taught by Dr. Andrew Orta!

Andean Ethnography (ANTH 481) surveys Andean cultures at the time of the Spanish conquest, their subsequent history, and present Indigenous culture in the Andes.

In Fall 2026, Dr. Ann-Perry Witmer will be offering an online course, ABE 232 (CRN 75460)/AFST (CRN 75542), “Context in International Interventions”, offered Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:30-1:50 p.m. The course fits general education requirements for Non-Western Cultural Studies and Behavioral Sciences.

See the image attached for a description of the course!

Would you like to learn more about Dr. Ethan Madarieta’s work? Dr. Madarieta will be visiting UIUC to present his book Land’s Language: On Mapuche Memory, Translation, and the Territorial Aporia.

CLACS invites you to a light breakfast with Dr. Madarieta this coming Monday, April 20, at 9:00 a.m. in Coble Hall, Room 108.

On the same day, he will have a presentation at 5:00 p.m. in Levis Faculty Center, Room 208.

Please RSVP using the link in bio.

We hope to see you there!