2018 Kemp Symposium
The 2018 Kemp Symposium
Border Crossings: A Short Symposium Celebrating the Career of Professor Allen Wells
Friday, October 26th in Lancaster Lounge, with a reception following in Main Lounge.
Allen Wells, Roger Howell, Jr. Professor of History, is a noted scholar of modern Latin America. A New York native, he earned his BA in history and Latin American studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1974 and his PhD at Stony Brook University in 1979. Wells came to Bowdoin in 1988 after teaching for nine years at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. He has taught courses spanning the entire scope of Latin American history from the pre-colonial era to the twenty-first century. His scholarship has been as equally expansive, encompassing modern Mexican history, the history of commodities and global trade, environmental and agricultural history, immigration history, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Wells has earned grants and fellowships from the American Council for Learned Societies, American Philosophical Society, Institute for Advanced Study, John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Social Science Research Council. At Bowdoin, he has supervised 27 honors thesis projects and many more independent studies in both History and Latin American Studies. Many of his former Bowdoin students have pursued careers in higher education as well as journalism, medicine and public health, social work, immigrant and labor rights, government, primary and secondary education and non-profit foundations. In his teaching as well as his scholarship, Wells crosses disciplinary and pedagogical borders in his passion to share Latin American history and its place in United States and the world.
This short symposium will feature three panels of talks by fellow Latin American historians as well as Bowdoin alumni who have gone on to work in academia or fields connected to Latin American, Latinx, and Chicano/a issues.
A public reception will follow the symposium in Lancaster Lounge, Moulton Union.
Panels and Presenters
Opening Remarks and Continental Breakfast, 9:00-9:30 AM
Lancaster Lounge, Moulton Union
Panel 1, 9:30-11:30 AM
Scholars reflecting Wells’ broad research interests present on topics ranging from the Mexican Revolution to the history of the Argentine wine industry. Organized by Ben Fallaw, Professor of Latin American Studies, Colby College and moderated by Javier Cikota, Assistant Professor of History, Bowdoin College.
William Taylor, Muriel McKevitt Sonne Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley
“A Rogue and the Mexican Inquisition in the Late Eighteenth Century”
Steven Topik, Distinguished Professor of History, University of California, Irvine
“Coffee in the Land of El Dorado-- or, at the End of the World”
Steve Stein, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Miami
“Argentine Wine: A History in Three Glasses”
Ben Fallaw, Professor of Latin American Studies, Colby College
“A Yucatecan Strongman in Retirement: Governor Bartolomé García Correa’s Life after Politics, 1940-1978”
Panel Two, 12:45-2:45 PM
Former undergraduate and graduate students now in academia discuss their work on diverse topics from U.S.-Venezuelan relations to Latin American artists in interwar Paris. Organized by Elizabeth Shesko '02, Assistant Professor, Oakland University, Russell Crandall '94, Professor of Political Science, Davidson College and Britta Crandall, Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies, Davidson College and moderated by Elizabeth Shesko.
Cassia Roth ’08, Assistant Professor of History & Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute, University of Georgia
“From Free Womb to Criminalized Woman: Fertility Control in Brazilian Slavery and Freedom”
Stanley “Chip” Blake ’90, Associate Professor of History, Ohio State University-Lima
“Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Recife, Brazil”
Michele Greet ’93, Associate Professor of Art History, George Mason University
“Vicente do Rego Monteiro’s Quelques visages de Paris: A Cultural Parody”
Miguel R. Tinker Salas, Leslie Farmer Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of History and Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, Pomona College
“’Operating in the U.S. Orbit’: Venezuela and the United States, from World War II to the Cold War”
Panel Three, 3:00-5:00 PM
Bowdoin alumni share their experiences working on Latin American and Latinx issues in Mexico, the Caribbean, and in rural Maine. Organized by Ian Yaffe, Mano en Mano and Nadia Celis, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Director of the Latin American Studies program, Bowdoin College and moderated by Marcio Siwi, CFD Postdoctoral Fellow in Latin American Studies, Bowdoin College
Sarah Edgecomb '03, Edgecomb Law LLC
"High Skilled Migration between Latin America and the United States"
Michael Lettieri ’05, Fellow at the Center for US-Mexican Studies, UC San Diego
“How to Tell the History of the Drug War in Mexico”
Yanna Muriel ’05, Culture of Health Leader, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
“Entre suelos solidarios: Farmers Connecting Across Latin America”
Ian Yaffe ’09, Executive Director, Mano en Mano/ Hand in Hand
“Migration, Education and Justice in Rural Maine”
Closing Remarks and Reception, 5:00-7:00 PM
Main Lounge, Moulton Union