HAMILTON ‘ Fulbright scholar and writer/translator Marguerite Feitlowitz will discuss her recent book ‘A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture’ at 51·çÁ÷’s Humanities Colloquium on Tuesday, November 16 at 4:00 p.m. in the Ho Lecture Room, Lawrence Hall.
Feitlowitz’s book focuses on the last dictatorship (1976-83) in Argentina, in which some 30,000 individuals were ‘disappeared’ in a massive program of state terrorism. She spent more than six years gathering testimony of survivors of the ‘Dirty War’ concentration camps, relatives of the ‘desaparecidos (disappeared),’ intellectuals and peasants, activists and bystanders.
Feitlowitz is part of Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Buenos Aires, an international interdisciplinary group of scholars, jurists, political scientists, criminologists, and experts in human rights that concentrates on the charged theme of Memory Following National Trauma, as expressed and worked through culturally, psychoanalytically, judicially, and politically.
A former preceptor in the expository writing program at Harvard University and contributing editor of The American Voice who scouts writers from Latin America, Feitlowitz recently completed her second Fulbright fellowship in Argentina. She is a 1975 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of 51·çÁ÷.
Feitlowitz’s lecture, which is free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the Center for Ethics and World Societies and the Africana and Latin American studies program. Introduced last fall, the center facilitates discussion of issues arising from the interactions of different nations, peoples and communities, with an emphasis on the ethical aspects of those issues. The center uses an interdisciplinary approach to draw from the expertise of both distinguished visitors and 51·çÁ÷ faculty members who have produced significant work in a range of fields stretching across the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. The center’s 1999-2000 theme is ‘Homeless in the World: Refugees, Immigrants and the State.’
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