On Tuesday, March 23 at 12 pm MST, the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies presents Cowards Don’t Make History: A Talk About the Origins of Participatory Action Research by Dr. Joanne Rappaport  via zoom.  Register here

Dr. Joanne Rappaport will share her latest research on the history of the development of an activist-centered research collective in the 1970s by pioneering Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda (1925-2008) and his collaborators from the National Peasant User Association. In her new book, Dr. Rappaport describes how a group of academics and grass-roots researchers shared research authority and transformed research into a political action tool. Dr. Rappaport will talk about the implications of this methodology in today's community-centered research. Following the presentation participants will be able to interact with the author and other invitees.  

Joanne Rappaport, an anthropologist in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University, received her Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1982. Dr. Rappaport has published several single-authored books in English and Spanish. She also edited a special issue of the Journal of Latin American Anthropology (vol. 1, no. 2, 1996) entitled Ethnicity Reconfigured: Indigenous Legislators and the Colombian Constitution of 1991, which analyzes the implications for native peoples of the creation of a pluriethnic state in Colombia.  

Discussant: Dr. Les W. Field is a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Field has decades of experience working collaboratively with the indigenous organizations in South, Central and North America and Palestine. Dr. Field has written about Israel’s support of regimes in Latin America that have perpetuated racial, economic and political inequalities in the region. He co-authored the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) resolution at the American Anthropological Association (AAA), calling on the AAA to boycott international support for the Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism and encouraging individuals and academic institutions to end affiliations with Israeli cultural and academic institutions. Together, Dr. Field and Dr. Rappaport edited an issue in Collaborative Anthropologies (vol. 4, 2011), which focused on collaborative research methods in Latin America.