Moderators

Ulla Berg and Alyshia Gálvez, NYU

Panelists

Silvia Spitta Dartmouth College, "New Mexico/New Mestizo: Enacted and Otherwise Enchanted Environments."
Sylvia Molloy NYU, "Displaying Americas: Idols and Ideology."
Vivian Martínez Tabares Casa de las Américas (Cuba), "Amplitud representacional de las religiosidades cubanas."

Biographies

Ulla Dallum Berghas an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark).  She is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at NYU where she is doing her dissertation research on Peruvian transnational migration, communicative practices, and diasporic nationalisms.  She directed, produced and edited the documentary Waiting for Miracles (2003) and has worked as assistant producer on several documentary film projects in Peru, Bolivia, and Denmark.

Alyshia Gálvez is a PhD candidate in Socio Cultural Anthropology and the program in Culture, Media and History at NYU, where she works on the nexus between religion, politics and citizenship among Mexican migrants in New York City.  She is interested in the ways participants in devotional organizations dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe engage in alternative notions and practices of citizenship in spite of lacking juridical citizenship in the nation-state. She is currently editing a volume compiled of contributions to the Hemispheric Institute's working group on Hemispheric Religiositites (November 2002, NYU and Rutgers University).

Silvia Spitta is Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Dartmouth College. Her field of interest ranges from contemporary and colonial Latina/o American writers, theories of transculturation, and narratives of mestizaje or miscegenation. Author of Between Two Waters: Literary Transculturation in Latin America, Spitta is currently working on a book titled Theories of Colonialism in/of the Americas and on a project concerning the mestizo in Latin American and Latino narratives.

Sylvia Molloy, Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities at New York University, is one of the most influential scholars of Latin American literature and culture. She is also a prestigious fiction writer. Her novel En Breve Cárcel (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1981) has been translated into English and Portuguese. She recently finished a new novel El Comun Olvido. She has been the recipient of numerous honors: Presidency of the Modern Language Language Association, the Doctorate of Humane Letters, Tulane University, the Achievement Award for Outstanding Service to La Herencia Latina and the Latino Community, the N.E.H Fellowship and the Guggenheim Fellowship.

Vivian Martínez Tabares is a Cuban critic, researcher, editor and professor. She has published Teatro por el Gran Octubre, José Sanchis Sinisterra: Explorar las Vías del Texto Dramático, y Didascalias Urgentes de una Espectadora Interesada. Her work has been compiled in theatre anthologies, and she has collaborated in specialized publications in the Americas and Europe. She is a professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte, and has lectured in several universities in Latin America and Europe. She received the "Caribe 2000" Rockefeller Foundation fellowship at Universidad de Puerto Rico. Martínez Tabares is director of Conjunto magazine, and is head of the Theatre Department of Casa de las Américas, Cuba, where she organizes the Theatrical May Season.