Velorio del Angelito

Danny James, Bernardo Mendel Professor of Latin American History at Indiana University, spoke at SFU Harbour Centre on “Quemando el parquet: cabecitas negras, urban legends and abjection. The construction of regional identity in an Argentine working class community” as part of the SFU/UBC Latin American Studies Spring Semester Working Paper Series. This discussion session was recorded March 29, 2012.

Presenter Biography

Daniel James was educated at Oxford University and received his doctorate from the London School of Economics. He was a Research Fellow at Cambridge University and from 1979 to 1982 taught sociology at the University of Brasilia. Since coming to the United States he has taught Latin American history at Yale University and Duke University until coming to Indiana in 1999 to take up the Bernardo Mendel Chair in Latin American History.

His primary research interests have been in Argentina. Since first going to Argentina in 1972 he has spent frequent prolonged periods in Argentina. His principle interest has been in modern Argentine labor, social and cultural history. Much of the focus of his work has been on Peronism. His first book, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class 1943 - 1976, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1988. Since the late 1980s he has been engaged in a long-term collaborative project with Professor Mirta Zaida Lobato of the University of Buenos Aires focused on the history of the meatpacking community of Berisso. A central part of this project has involved the collection of oral testimonies in the community. This interest in oral history led to a second book, Dona Maria’s Story: Life History, Memory and Political Identity, published by Duke University Press. This book presents a long testimony by an elderly woman meatpacking activist. In addition, there are a series of chapters that offer a prolonged meditation on the practice of oral history, its methodology and its ethical and epistemological assumptions. Daniel James has recently been appointed codirector of the Center for History and Memory at Indiana University.

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