UCL Americas Public Seminar Series: Colombia Revisited

THIS IS AN ONLINE EVENT ONLY

Prof Britto and Lopez-Pedreros present their most recent books —Histories of Solitude and Histories of Perplexity — which combine chronological coverage, analytical breadth, and interdisciplinary approaches to study the histories of Colombia over the last two centuries.

Paying attention to Colombia’s vital role as a node connecting the regional histories of the Caribbean, the Andean, the Pacific, and the Amazon, as well as its centrality to U.S.-Latin American relations, these two volumes seek to offer histories of Colombia as illustrations of the histories of democracy and democratic struggles in the Americas.

The volumes are the product of collaborative research, critical collegiality, and an intergenerational and collective dialogue. They bring together over 40 scholars based in Colombia, the United States, England, and Canada, working in various disciplines, including history, economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, philosophy, media studies, and art criticism. In so doing, the volumes discuss how a country that has been consistently presented as a rarity in Latin America provides critical examples to re-examine major historical problems: republicanism and liberalism; export economies and agrarian modernisation; populism and cultural politics of state formation; revolutionary and counterinsurgent Cold War violence; neoliberal reforms and urban development; popular mobilisation and counterhegemonic public spheres; political ecologies and environmental struggles; and labours of memory and the challenge of reconciliation. Contributors are sensitive to questions of subjectivity and discourse, observant of ethnographic details and micro-politics, and attuned to macro-perspectives such as transnational and global histories.

Chaired by Paulo Drinot