CLAS Video: A Conversation with Juan Villoro
The Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), an affiliated regional center of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, virtually hosted a conversation with Méxican novelist, playwright, and journalist Juan Villoro, on which he analyzed the relationship between Archeology and Literature in México. The lecture was livecast on Wednesday, April 29, 2020. The presentation can be viewed below.
Through literary works byMéxican authors such as Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Garro, José Emilio Pacheco, and Carlos Pellicer, as well as his own chronicles, Villoro reflected on the role of literature in continuous re-interpretation of an ever-open past, building bridges from the present to a lost indigenous world, and filling out the enigmatic gaps of the past with imagination. He also highlighted how indigenous communities are often thought of as in the past, lacking recognition of their contemporaneity. The debate following his talk focused on the connections between identity and temporality, and how to re-think the place of the indigenous past in Mexican identity in connection with colonialism and capitalism.
The presentation was entitled “Arqueología y literatura en México: Una conversación virtual con Juan Villoro.”
The Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) provides students with a versatile and powerful vehicle to develop an in-depth and interdisciplinary understanding of the Latin American region.The program offers students a wide variety of regionally-focused courses in Latin America, which are taught by a range of academic departments. The interdisciplinary nature of the program provides the necessary breadth and depth for students to understand the complexities and remarkable diversity of Latin America, defined as the 20 independent countries in the Western Hemisphere south of the United States with Spanish, French, or Portuguese as their official languages.