Guest Faculty and Artists’ Biographies
2012
Jane Anderson, assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is a legal scholar, a consultant and an advocate on intellectual property and Indigenous/traditional/local knowledge resources. Jane Anderson holds a PhD in Law from the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her work is focused on the philosophical and practical problems for intellectual property law and the protection of Indigenous/traditional knowledge and cultural heritage. In addition to her theoretical and philosophical work in this field, Jane has worked on a range of intellectual property and Indigenous knowledge projects with Indigenous communities and organizations in Australia, Indonesia, Canada and the United States.
In Australia these projects have focused on addressing Indigenous interests in access, control and ownership of ethnographic and cultural materials within libraries, archives and museums and the digital repatriation of this material back to communities. In Indonesia as part of an inter-disciplinary research team, Jane worked with local artists and community leaders, non-governmental organizations and Indonesian government officials to develop alternative legal strategies for the protection of traditional artistic expressions across the Indonesian archipelago.
Jane is also working on several ongoing projects: namely, in Canada with Greg Young-Ing, Merle C. Alexander and the Indigenous Peoples Caucus on the development of practical guidelines for Indigenous and local communities when developing intellectual property protocols; as a Project Ethnographer for the SSHRC Project Intellectual Property in Cultural Heritage: Theory, Practice, Policy, Ethic; and with the World Intellectual Property Organization on the development of an international alternative dispute resolution/mediation service for intellectual property and Indigenous/traditional/local knowledge disputes.
Her book Law, Knowledge, Culture: The Production of Indigenous Knowledge in Intellectual Property Law was published in 2009 with Edward Elgar Press, UK.
Marjorie Agosín is a Professor of Spanish at Wellesley College where she teaches courses in Spanish language and Latin American literature. She has been a member of the faculty since 1982. Professor Agosín earned a B.A. degree at the University of Georgia (1976), and an M.A. at Indiana University (1977). She completed her Ph.D. at Indiana University in 1982. Recently, she received the Letras de Oro 1995 prize for poetry. Presented by Spain’s Ministry of Culture and the North-South Center of the University of Miami to a writer of Hispanic heritage living in the United States, the Letras de Oro recognizes both the creativity of the recipients and the importance of Spanish language in the United States today. She also won the 1995 Latino Literature Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Latin American Writers Institute. This prestigious prize was awarded for her book Toward the Splendid City (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, 1994).
Marjorie Agosín is a well-known spokesperson for the plight and priorities of women in Third World countries. Her book, Scraps of Life: Chilean Arpilleras (Red Sea Press, 1987, translated by Cola Franzen), tells of Chilean women who make their struggles known to the world through the exposition of “arpilleras,” folk tapestries which tell of their bravery and hardships in the face of oppression. Money from the sale of these handicrafts aids them in supporting families in which the men have been arrested, murdered, or have simply “disappeared.” Her concern for women in Chile has also been the focus feature articles in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Ms. Magazine, and the Barnard Occasional Papers on Women’s Issues.
Her most recent book is A Cross and A Star (University of New Mexico Press, 1995), a memoir of her mother’s childhood as a Jewish immigrant in a German community in Chile before, during and after World War II. Another manuscript, Noche Estrellada, about the life of Vincent Van Gogh, will be published by the North-South Center in 1996.
In recognition of her deep social concerns and accomplishments, Marjorie Agosín received a Good Neighbor Award in 1988 at the 31st annual awards celebration hosted by the Northeastern Region of The National Conference of Christians and Jews.
The first of her seven books of poetry to appear with English translations, Brujas y algo mas: Witches and Other Things (1984), is available from Latin American Literary Review Press in Pittsburgh.
She has also published poems in Nosotras: Latina Literature Today, (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, N.Y., 1986). Marjorie Agosín is the author of a work of criticism on the Chilean author, Maria Luisa Bombal (Senda Nueva de Additions, 1983), and articles concerning Latin American women writers appearing in such publications as Cuadernos Americanos, Arbor: Ciencia, Pensamiento y Cultura, and Latin American Theater Review.
Roberta Bacic Herzfeld, a child of European immigrants, was born in Santiago, Chile in 1949. She qualified as a professor of Philosophy and English and taught at Austral University in Valdivia from December 1973 to January 1981 when she was dismissed for political reasons.
From 1982 she worked as faculty in English, initially in the Carlos Anwandter German Institute in Valdivia and then in San Mateo College in Osorno, both prestigious educational establishments in the south of Chile.
She later worked as a researcher for the National Corporation of Reparation and Reconciliation, in the Temuco regional office from 1st February 1993 to 31st December 1996 (the date on which the Corporation ceased to legally exist). At the same time, she was a professor in Human Rights at the Catholic University, Temuco, Chile, and was a member of an interdisciplinary research cluster.
Frustrated at seeing neither significant nor comprehensive advances in the area of human rights in her own country, she applied for the position of Program and Development Officer with War Resisters’ International at its office in London. She took up this position in February 1998.
As a way of conveying processes of resistance, memory and the search for truth and justice in a context of repression, she turned to the use of narratives found in ‘arpilleras’, a textile art developed by Chilean women during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Arpilleras have greatly contributed to preserving the memory of such repressive acts and their impact on the daily lives of many women, their families and society.
Since 2008, she has curated more than 30 international exhibitions of arpilleras that have been a source of inspiration to women from different countries, encouraging them to represent through this medium how aspects of their personal and community life have been affected by human rights violations.
Ms. Bacic has lived in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom since 2004 and from there she works on organizing international exhibitions of arpilleras and quilts with political stories. For information on exhibitions she has curated: www.cain.ulst.ac.uk/quilts
Pilar Hernández-Wolfe is associate professor and director of the Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy program at Lewis and Clark College. She is a licensed family therapist and a licensed clinical professional counselor, a clinical member and approved supervisor of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and a consultant and trainer for the Institute for Family Services in New Jersey. In addition, she serves as board member of the American Family Therapy Academy and is a member of the American Psychological Association. Pilar has over fifteen years of experience working with individuals, couples and families in outpatient clinics and private practice. She has also worked with refugees and survivors of torture in San Diego and displaced populations in Colombia, her native country. As a consultant, trainer and presenter, she has collaborated with organizations in the U.S., Colombia and México in the areas of clinical supervision, traumatic stress, resilience, organizational diversity and equity, and contextually responsive family therapy.
Prior to coming to Lewis & Clark, Pilar taught in the Marriage and Family Therapy program at San Diego State University, where she developed a specialty program in trauma studies. Most recently, she directed the Mental Health Counseling program at Johns Hopkins University.
Sergio Reyes is a Boston resident and activist, was 19 years old when he was abducted from his home in Punta Arenas, faced a mock execution in front of his mother, was regularly beaten, electrocuted, and suffered from simulated drowning. Between 1973 and 1976, he was a political prisoner in a forced labor camp at the now infamous Dawson Island.
On January 10 (2008) about 30 ex-prisoners of Island Dawson sued the Chilean government demanding indemnization for all pains suffered during their detention. Their claim for justice reverberates north today, the International Day to Close Guantanamo Bay, as over 26 cities around the world demand the closure of the US detention center. (From “Chile to Guantanamo: A Survivor of Torture Speaks Out.” An interview by Sofia Jarrin for the Boston Underground. Winter 2007-2008.)
Leah Wing is Senior Lecturer in Legal Studies Program, Political Science Department, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Co-Director of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution (USA) Her research and teaching apply critical theory to online dispute resolution, mediation, and reconciliation in colonized and postcolonial societies. She has also been a mediator and trainer for educational institutions, government agencies, and non-profits since 1985, has served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Conflict Resolution from 2002-6, and has been a member of the editorial board of Conflict Resolution Quarterly since 2002. She is the founding director of the Social Justice Mediation Institute.
Leah is particularly interested in the role that technology and art play in conflict and its resolution and she directs the Art of Conflict Transformation Program. Since 2007 she has managed an event series hosted online and at the University of Massachusetts exploring such topics as the role of murals during the war and transition to peace in the north of Ireland/Northern Ireland and the creation of political textiles as acts of resistance to state violence by women throughout the world. She is presently collaborating with partners from several nations on the development of online archives and exhibition space for conflict-related art as part of conflict transformation processes.
Leah’s publications concentrate on the critical examination of conflict transformation theory and practices in both the online and offline worlds and her most recent publication is “Online Dispute Resolution and the Development of Theory” co-authored with Dan Rainey and forthcoming in M. Waahab, D. Rainey and E. Katsh, Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice (2012).
Leah has served on ODR research teams with colleagues from the UMASS Department of Computer Science and the National Mediation Board for a number of grants funded by the National Science Foundation, including: “The Fourth Party: Improving Computer-Mediated Deliberation through Cognitive, Social and Emotional Support;” “Process Families and their Application to Online Dispute Resolution;” and “Process Technology for Achieving Government Online Dispute Resolution.
Leah has been the recipient of: “Award for Distinguished Service to the Field of Conflict Resolution, Association for Conflict Resolution;” “Kuumba Award in Appreciation of Support and Efforts in Promoting Opportunities in the Field of Alternative Dispute Resolution for Minority Professionals, Capital University Law School, Minority ADR Program, Columbus, Ohio;” and “Chancellor’s Award for Multiculturalism, University of Massachusetts Amherst.”
James E. Young is Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he has taught since 1988, and currently the Chair of the Department of Judiac and Near Eastern Studies. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst since 1988. He has also taught at New York University as a Dorot Professor of English and Hebrew/Judaic Studies (1984-88), at Bryn Mawr College in the History of Religion, and at the University of Washington, Harvard University, and Princeton University as a visiting professor. He received his B.A. in 1973 from the University of California, Santa Cruz, his M.A. in 1976 from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. from the University of California in 1983.
Professor Young is the author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust (1988), The Texture of Memory (Yale University Press, 1993), which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1994, and At Memory’s Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (Yale University Press, 2000). He was also the Guest Curator of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City, entitled “The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History” (March – August 1994, with venues in Berlin and Munich, September 1994 – June 1995) and was the editor of The Art of Memory (Prestel Verlag, 1994), the exhibition catalogue for this show.
In 1997, Professor Young was appointed by the Berlin Senate to the five-member Findungskommission for Germany’s national “Memorial to Europe’s Murdered Jews,” under construction in Berlin. He has also consulted with Argentina’s government on its memorial to the desaparacidos, as well as with numerous city agencies on their memorials and museums. Most recently, he has been appointed by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to the jury for the World Trade Center Site Memorial competition, to be completed Fall 2003.
His articles and reviews have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Representations, New Literary History, Partisan Review, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Annales, SAQ, History and Theory, Harvard Design Magazine, Jewish Social Studies, Contemporary Literature, History and Memory, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Forward, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Prooftexts, The Jewish Quarterly, Tikkun, The New York Times Magazine and Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Slate, among dozens of other journals and collected volumes. His books and articles have been published in German, French, Hebrew, Japanese, and Swedish editions.
Professor Young is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, ACLS Fellowship, NEH Exhibition planning, implementation, and research grants, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Grants, an American Philosophical Society Grant, and a Yad Hanadiv Fellowship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, among others.
In 2000, he was appointed as Editor-in-Chief of the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, a ten-volume anthology of primary sources, documents, texts, and images, forthcoming with Yale University Press.
2008-2010
Danny Devenny is perhaps the most prolific Irish muralist, having produced over 1500 murals in Belfast, Dublin, Galway, NY, Massachusetts, Liverpool, and elsewhere since the early 1970’s. Originally trained as a graphic artist and designer for newspaper layouts and posters, he has worked throughout his life as a community artist.
Devenny is a former Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoner. He was arrested in 1973 while robbing a bank in Carryduff for the IRA; wounded in this incident, he spent time in Musgrave Military Hospital before being sent to Crumlin Road Jail and then Long Kesh Concentration Camp. He worked as a designer for Republican News on release from prison in December 1976 until he was arrested in April 1978 on trumped up charges. When trial collapsed, he continued to produce the republican weekly ‘on-the-run.’ He oversaw the amalgamation of the Belfast weekly republican newspaper and the Dublin based An Phoblacht. Devenny also worked as a graphic artist, newspaper layout designer, and poster designer for Sinn Fein throughout the 1980’s. He was shot by the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) in an attack on Sinn Fein Headquarters in November 1981.
In the 1980’s, Devenny produced, directed and edited several documentaries and other media programmes for Sinn Fein and from 1993-1994, he directed and edited Sinn Fein broadcast videos for BBC.
His theatre credits include many production designs for republican and left wing plays. He did set design for most of West Belfast’s Dubbeljoint Theatre Company’s productions; including Binlids, A Mothers Heart, Des, Black Taxis, Paddy on the Road, Remnants of Fear, The Voyage, Aladdin, Malachy Mulligan, and The Official Version.
Devenny has worked with both the West Belfast and Ardoyne festivals since their inception creating colour and sparkle for many of their carnival parades and shows. He produced backdrops for the Angela Feeney Classical Bursary Awards, from 1994-1999.
Devenny’s mural skills have been requested by a multitude of commercial interests and his work has been commissioned for Hollywood films such as The Boxer, The Devil’s Own, Some Mother’s Son, The Everlasting Piece, Man on the Run, 50 Dead Men Walking and the Most Fertile Man in Ireland.
Devenny continues to paint murals in Belfast and most recently he has worked with Mark Ervine and others to paint across communities. Their murals have garnered significant international media attention.
In March 2009 the Jigsaw Mural project on which they worked won the Silver Award at the Belfast City Council’s Youth in the Community Award.
Mark Ervine was born and raised in East Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has been painting murals in Belfast and elsewhere for almost 30 years. His art work has shown in galleries in the United Kingdom and New York City. He frequently paints with youth, engaging them on topics of importance on social issues the experience in their lives such as drug and alcohol abuse, joy riding, racism, social deprivation, and poverty.
He has produced works for private commissions, for gallery shows of his work as well as for shows in tandem with other artists. He has also produced murals for community events and organizations as well as commercial businesses.
Ervine recently began designing and painting murals with Republican ex-prisoner
and muralist, Danny Devenny. Their work has garnered significant international
media attention. In March 2009 the Jigsaw Mural project on which they worked
won the Silver Award at the Belfast City Council’s Youth in the Community Award.
He is the son of David Ervine, former Progressive Unionist Party leader and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) member and ex-prisoner. Today, Ervine continues to paint for his community as well as across communities, and painted the set backdrop to the film, 50 Dead Men Walking.
2009
Dr. Patricia Lundy is faculty in Sociology at the University of Ulster. Her research interests are in the study of post-conflict transition, ‘dealing with the past’, contested memories and the legacy of human rights abuses. She has studied unofficial community-based ‘story telling’/ ‘truth recovery’ processes and official police-led historical enquiries.
She is particularly interested in ‘truth’ recovery and ‘bottom-up’ participatory approaches. In collaboration with Northern Ireland Life and Times (NILT), she co-authored a Northern Ireland wide survey on ‘Attitudes Towards a Truth Commission for NI’ (2006). Her most recent research is an in-depth study of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI). The HET is an innovative police-led initiative which breaks new ground in transitional justice and offers lessons internationally.
The project also involves interviews with victims and their assessment of the HET process. She was awarded a British Academy Large Grant (2007/8) and Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship (2009/10) to undertake the research. Her work has been published in a wide range of journals including Sociology, Law and Society, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Law and Social Challenges and Contemporary Social Science.
Professor Mark McGovern is a Professor of Sociology the Department of Social and Psychological Sciences at the University. His research interests include Irish republicanism, Ulster Loyalism and politics in Northern Ireland and has published widely on truth recovery and post-conflict transition including the co-authored book (with Dr Patricia Lundy) Ardoyne: the Untold Truth (2002) and in international journals such as Law and Society, International Journal of Transitional Justice, and Sociology.