Traditions are closely tied to specific environments and cultures, and emigrants are disconnected from these when they move. This program explores how diasporas preserve, transform, or amalgamate cultural practices in their new countries.
Speakers
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Floridalma Boj Lopez, Assistant Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, UCLA (Tovaangar)
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Maureen Duru, Founder, The Food Bridge
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Katarzyna Wąsowska & Marianne Wąsowska, Artists
Moderator: Thuy Vo Dang, Assistant Professor of Information Studies, UCLA (Tovaangar)
Image Credit: Floridalma Boj Lopez, "Photo of an Elder"
About the Speakers
Floridalma Boj Lopez is an Assistant Professor in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies. Her work uses a transborder approach to analyze the experiences of Maya migrants as they cross settler colonial borders and encounter distinct racial logics in the United States. Her research examines cultural production among the Guatemalan Maya diaspora with a particular emphasis on intergenerational relationships, gender, and the production of Indigenous migrant community in Los Angeles, CA. She is particularly interested in how these communities respond to structures of state violence and understand their relationship to indigeneity in ways that account for distinct experiences across generations. Dr. Boj Lopez is currently working on a manuscript entitled Mobile Archives of Indigeneity: The Mayan Diaspora and Indigenous Cultural Production, which examines how Guatemalan Mayan migrants and youth in Los Angeles challenge notions of Latinidad through material objects such as digital photography, Mayan regional clothing, and children’s literature. Her work has been published in Latino Studies Journal, International Journal of Human Rights Education, and in the book U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance.
Maureen Duru has a PhD in history from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel Belgium (VUB). Her research interests cover diasporas, food, and identity. She is a member of FOST--the international social and cultural food studies research group of the VUB. Dr. Duru is the founder of The Food Bridge vzw, a Belgian non-profit organization with projects focusing on indigenous food cultures and heritage, agrofood entrepreneurship, and food security in Africa and Europe. She is also the vice president of Sankaa, a government funded federation of 86 Afro-Belgian organizations working on socio-cultural and development initiatives.
Katarzyna Wąsowska is a photographer who graduated from the UAP and is currently an ethnology student at AMU Poznań. Marianne Wasowska is a photographer and visual artist. She graduated from the University of Nanterre (Paris X) with a degree in anthropology and holds a photography master from the ENSP in Arles. Their first project as a duo, "Waiting for the snow", was selected among others by the Fotofestiwal in Łódz (2020), Encontros da Imagem (2020), PhotoEspaña (2020), Odesa Photo Days (2021), Fictions documentaires (2022). The main solo exhibition of this work took place at the Museum of Emigration in Gdynia, Poland (2021).
Thuy Vo Dang is a professor of Information Studies and oral historian at the University of California, Los Angeles where she also co-directs the UCLA Community Archives Lab. Formerly the curator for the University of California, Irvine’s Southeast Asian Archive and director of Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project, Thuy’s work centers voices on the margins of history. She is coauthor of A People's Guide to Orange County and Vietnamese in Orange County and serves as a board member for Arts Orange County and the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association.
Sponsors
UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies; UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration; UCLA International Institute; UCLA LGBTQ Campus Resource Center; UCLA School of Law Williams Institute
