Historias para lo que viene: Podcasting for Social Justice in Colombia
Catalina Muñoz, Universidad de los Andes, PLAS Visiting Research Scholar
February 8, 2023 · 12:00 pm—1:20 pm · 216 Aaron Burr Hall
Program in Latin American Studies
The participation of history in transitional justice processes has tended to be one of setting the record straight by providing objective evidence about past violent events. As such, it is tied to conventional notions of history as linear, progressive, and centered in nation-states. This presentation showcases Historias para lo que viene, a public history project which posits that history can do much more than that: it can be a forward-looking endeavor that combines critical inquiry with radical action. The project grew out of the 2016 peace accords between the FARC guerrillas and the Colombian government, and it is based on the premise that building futures of social justice entails addressing long histories of exclusion and inequality. This collaborative project brings together social leaders from communities victimized in the context of the armed conflict, communicators, schoolteachers and historians to co-produce audio stories that entwine the past and present of those communities and their political struggles, from their perspective and in their voices, as an epistemological intervention. Just as historical narratives have been inherent to the production of power structures, they can play a role in challenging them.
ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER
Catalina Muñoz (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is an associate professor of history at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Her publications include A Fervent Crusade for the National Soul: Cultural Politics in Colombia, 1930-1946 (Lexington Books, 2022) and articles in the Hispanic American Historical Review, Ethnohistory, and Revista de Estudios Sociales, among others. She was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Humanities Action Lab in Rutgers University-Newark in the fall of 2017 and was awarded a membership in the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science, in the fall of 2022. A public historian, her research and practice examine the relevance of historical thinking and longue durée analysis to transitional justice, a field traditionally dominated by lawyers. Read full bio.
DISCUSSANT
Sebastián Ramírez, Lecturer, Anthropology, Princeton University
Open to students, faculty, visiting scholars, staff and specially invited guests. A boxed lunch will be provided while supplies last.
