Shruti Gupta Conducts UROP on Achi’ Cultural Memory
Shruti Gupta is a graduating Senior studying Political Science with minors in Spanish and Flute performance. She enjoyed learning languages growing up, but classes in Colonial Mexico and Latin American Literature brought her to study Spanish at the college-level. In Summer 2020, she completed a UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program) with Professor David Colmenares, and continued her work into Fall 2020 with a Directed Study. Read about Shruti’s research and what brought her to this study below:
“In summer ‘20 I studied Achi’ cultural memory in post-genocide Guatemala also with Prof. Colmenares as a Humanities Scholar in the UROP program. Last semester my directed study focused on the 16th century ‘spiritual conquest’ of Guatemala and four conversion texts arranged by the Dominican Order in the Verapaces. These texts were largely music- and theater- based, co-opted from existing indigenous cultural practices. Exploring these texts and their contemporary realizations was fascinating. Performing arts are inherently unstable: they cannot maintain their original form, because after a generation it’s likely that the composer, original audience, and performers are deceased. So the way that the performance of a work evolves can tell us a lot about a culture’s self-perception – the way it’s responded to historical processes, and re-envisioned itself over time. I looked at the way indigenous musical traditions were co-opted, and I also looked at the way that theatrical works were constructed versus how they are performed today. This allowed me to grasp larger concepts about the nature of colonization and crucially about decolonization.
I was a music major in CFA for two years. I was taught European music history and theory by a largely white faculty who themselves trained under largely white faculty. As someone passionate about racial justice and indigenous rights, I began to understand the ways that performing arts are rooted in, and also governed by, cultural colonialism. My work with Prof. Colmenares allowed me to address a microcosm of cultural colonialism while furthering my studies of Latin American indigenous history. Broadly, I hope that students of the arts continue to challenge systems of power by engaging in projects that center non-Western voices.”
On campus, Shruti works in the Forced Migration and Human Trafficking Co-Lab at BU Spark. After graduation in May, she hopes to work in Boston and continue to participate in advocacy and social justice.
To find out more information on how you can participate in UROP or Directed Study, contact your Faculty Advisor in the Romance Studies Department.