Latin American Studies Center: Lara Putnam, "Transnational Pasts and the Immigrant Present: Can New Stories about Where We're from Shape Where We Go From Here?"
Latin American Studies Center: Lara Putnam, "Transnational Pasts and the Immigrant Present: Can New Stories about Where We're from Shape Where We Go From Here?"
Latin American Studies Center
Visiting Scholar Spring 2013
Prof. Lara Putnam, University of Pittsburgh
will deliver a lecture and two-part workshop on
Immigration, the African Diaspora, and Caribbean History
Prof. Putnam will be in residence for twelve days. She will lecture publicly and run intensive workshops for graduate students and faculty. Advanced undergraduates may also attend. UMD students may receive credit for attending.
Mark your calendars.
Lecture: Transnational Pasts and the Immigrant Present: Can New Stories about Where We're From Shape Where We Go From Here?
Location: 3202 Knight Hall
Date and Time: Tuesday, March 5, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Workshop: History Across Borders: Methodological and Narrative Challenges of the Transnational Turn
Location: 3200 Knight Hall
Dates and Times:
1) Friday, March 1, 9:30 AM – 2:30 PM
2) Friday, March 8, 9:30 AM – 2:30 PM
Lara Putnam asks both "how to" and "what then" questions about historical research into transnational connections, especially as they relate to issues of diaspora, the greater Caribbean, and migration. Over the past decade, historians have set aside previous nation-based frameworks and turned unprecedented attention to exploring patterns of mobility and interconnection in the past. What methods, sources, concepts, and research designs have been most fruitful? What have the new techniques revealed, and which areas remain unexplored? Are what are we doing with this new knowledge? How can the new stories scholars are uncovering most effectively enrich public understandings of the past? This mini-course will draw most heavily on three subfields in exploring these questions--African Diaspora Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Immigration History--but our discussion of methodology, research design, and storytelling should be widely useful to any student tackling the challenges of border-crossing history.
Lara Putnam is associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her PhD in history from the University of Michigan. She has also taught at the Universidad de Costa Rica as a professor and worked there as a researcher. Putnam is an internationally recognized scholar who specializes in gender, ethnicity, race, and memory as they relate to both Latin American and Atlantic history; she is the author of The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870–1960 and Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age among other works.
Students interested in receiving one course credit should contact lasc@umd.edu for additional information regarding registration and course requirements.
Those wishing to attend the workshops should RSVP to lasc@umd.eduby Friday, February 22, 2013. Participants in the workshops should be prepared to do a set of short readings, which can be accessed via instruction.