Papers and Articles by Maria Alessandra Woolson
ESLA, English Studies in Latin America, Jul 15, 2019
Modern environmental scholarship has been shaped largely by a rational approach to natural scienc... more Modern environmental scholarship has been shaped largely by a rational approach to natural sciences, rooted in Cartesian principles. This universal and theory-centered criterion has often come into conflict with alternative world-views, generating tensions to the detriment of local communities. This article looks at ways in which the environmental humanities reconcile these tensions, while contributing to discussions about sustainability, enabling a transdisciplinary approach to environmental scholarship and stewardship. Ecocriticism, which had been traditionally understood as the dialectics of culture and nature, provides an analytical framework to look into the complex nature of environmental problems by drawing out the wisdom and insights of a wealth of creative works across diverse cultural landscapes. When this outlook is coupled with a Global South perspective, which sees environmental issues as fundamentally eco-social, it raises questions of justice and equity that make cultural and ethnic diversity inherent to discussions about environment and representation.
This analysis draws from over 10 years of research on pedagogical approaches to sustainability and recent experiences from students in environmental humanities courses focused on Latin America. Teaching environmental humanities becomes an opportunity to view the concept of sustainability as a cultural project that engages with many of the enduring “big questions” of what it means to be human on this planet. As a result, environmental ethics becomes an entry point to discussions about some of the big questions of the present and the outlook for the future, and sees social and intellectual tensions about the environment as symptomatic of a broader crisis of modernity, a crisis of modern thought.
ReVista. The Harvard Review of Latin America, 2018
RCEI. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses , 2018
At the turn of the twenty-first century ecocriticism has moved beyond its tradition of analyzing ... more At the turn of the twenty-first century ecocriticism has moved beyond its tradition of analyzing nature writing to integrate new forms of expression that shift visibility towards issues of temporality, environmental justice, and environmental ethics. This paper looks at the most recent open-space installations of Mexican sculptor Helen Escobedo, examining how her artworks act as physical and discursive interventions capable of disrupting encoded modes of modes of knowing about space and environment. These simulating installations are contextually conceived and situated in dialogue with the community where each piece was envisioned; they functions as an assemblage of referential information bound to be reconstituted, reinterpreted and resignified by the observer. In doing this, Escobedo reveals a profound understanding that change and sustainable futures can only be envisioned when integrating ourselves with Others, un "nos y otros que es un nosotros" of communal experience.
Resumen A fines del milenio, la ecocrítica ha superado su tradición analítica de nature writing para integrar nuevas formas de expresión que confieren visibilidad a cuestiones de temporalidad, justicia y ética ambiental. Este artículo analiza las instalaciones en espacios abiertos de los últimos quince años de vida de la escultora mexicana Helen Escobedo y observa cómo sus obras resultan ser intervenciones tanto físicas como discursivas que alteran los modos de codificación que asignamos al espacio y al medioambiente. Contextualmente concebidas, estéticamente estimulantes y situadas en diálogo con la comunidad donde se concibieron, estas instalaciones funcionan como un conjunto de información referencial destinada a ser reconstituida, reinterpretada y resignificada por el observador. De este modo, Escobedo revela una profunda comprensión de que todo cambio hacia un futuro sostenible solo pueden concebirse por medio de una integración colectiva, un "nos y otros que es un nosotros" de la experiencia comunitaria. Palabras clave: ecocrítica, instalaciones artísticas, estudios de performance, sustentabilidad, América latina.
Sustainability as a Pedagogical Principle in Liberal Arts Education
The International Journal of Sustainability Education, 2015
Sustainability is a complex concept that integrates multiple areas of study. Its focus lies at th... more Sustainability is a complex concept that integrates multiple areas of study. Its focus lies at the intersection of natural and social systems, which presents significant challenges and exceptional opportunities. While its inclusive nature appears to be at odds with the dominant disciplinary organization of knowledge in higher education, its trans-disciplinary outlook appreciates the interactions across broader domains of knowledge that are necessary for addressing current challenges and innovation. This paper introduces sustainability as the focus of pedagogy in liberal arts education. Particular attention is dedicated to what it means to employ sustainability as a foundational pedagogical principle in the humanities and the social sciences. Three examples, drawn from seven years of teaching Latin American culture and foreign languages at Middlebury College, Vermont, USA, illustrate different areas of learning and discuss how to address the intergenerational obligations of sustainability, as a concept that is concerned with both equity and the integrity of the Earth system. Methodologically, the pedagogical approach promotes systems thinking and the development of skills and knowledge from experiential learning and collaboration. Conceptually, it also challenges critical thinking to embrace critical responsibility, while crossing disciplinary and cognitive bridges to engage the complexity of contemporary issues. Ultimately, sustainability as pedagogical principle is meant to inspire intellectual courage, and to empower students in asking the big questions of tomorrow
Resignifying Environmental Epistemology through Latin America’s Artistic Representation
The International Journal of Sustainability in Economic, Social, and Cultural Context, 2013
The complex nature of the transformation needed to disassemble modern frameworks of thought and t... more The complex nature of the transformation needed to disassemble modern frameworks of thought and to reintegrate socio-ecological externalities into new public consciousness, points to the central role of culture in the search for sustainability. This includes a reappraisal of artistic production and their relationship to what spiritual and ethical values we attribute to the natural world. In this paper I explore the transformative power of fictional narratives and plastic art of late 20th and 21st century Latin America that, as creative works, interact with their contemporary realities. The approach observes the production of meaning as interwoven relationships between rationally articulated representations and non-visible performative forces that frame how we act upon our collective imagination. Proposed as an interdisciplinary analytical framework, this viewpoint weaves together environmental epistemology, the language of aesthetics and a study of representations, to place artistic expression as a site of convergence of various forms of signification. With no evident normative impetus, the authors selected expose a cosmology that is holistic, integrated, eco-centric and cyclical, central to many collective identities of Latin America. Sustainability, therefore, emerges as a normative criterion for reacquainting culture and nature.
Designing a Virtual Social Space for Language Acquisition
International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2012
Middleverse de Español MdE is an evolving platform for foreign language FL study, aligned to the ... more Middleverse de Español MdE is an evolving platform for foreign language FL study, aligned to the goals of ACTFL's National Standards and 2007 MLA report. The project simulates an immersive environment in a virtual 3-D space for the acquisition of translingual and transcultural competence in Spanish meant to support content-based and communicative classroom practices. This paper describes the design of MdE on Second Life as a dynamic environment of integrated technologies and its selection criteria, including the pedagogical principles guiding design and practices. Pedagogy is further explored conceptually in addressing language acquisition and cultural immersion within the broader communication's system of language, images and symbols of the digitalized age. The initial pilot demonstrates that negotiations of meaning and negative feedback intrinsic to virtual interactions promote repair moves. Furthermore, students' reconfiguring of conventionalized norms of participation results in increased exchanges in the classroom that stimulate student-centered discussions and meaningful collaborative work.
El mito de Evita en la narrativa de Tomás Eloy Martínez: un performance político materializado en el cuerpo
Divergencia. Revista de estudios lingüísticos y literarios, 2012
Chapters in Scholarly Books by Maria Alessandra Woolson
“From Management to Governance: Rethinking Water Policy and Privatization on Easter Island.”
Published in The Politics of Freshwater. Access, Conflict and Identity. Tamar Mayer & Catherine A... more Published in The Politics of Freshwater. Access, Conflict and Identity. Tamar Mayer & Catherine Ashcraft, Eds. Abingdon: Rutledge.
Privatization of water has been advanced by national governments and international lending agencies as the most effective approach to managing water quality, quantity and access. This chapter examines the contradictions between institutional practices organized around water privatization as a universal set of technical problems to be solved, and the ecological and cultural processes that constitute water systems, which can only be comprehensibly addressed through water governance. The Chilean case of Easter Island highlights the problems of managing water strictly as an economic good that treats the resource independently from its socio-cultural context and related ecological and social challenges.
Books by Maria Alessandra Woolson
Re-engraving Assayer’s Initials in Potosi Cobs
Co-authored with Emilio Paoletti.
ABSTRACT
Re-engraving Assayer's Initials in Potosi Cobs examin... more Co-authored with Emilio Paoletti.
ABSTRACT
Re-engraving Assayer's Initials in Potosi Cobs examines the coinage minted in Potosi between 1576-1773, to trace the overlap and transitions between assayers. Few assayers minted coins without reusing previous dies. The resulting re-engraved pieces are here described in detail, while also treated as historic artifacts, thus revealing both the socioeconomic and the political context of its time.
PREFACE
Numismatics, or the study and collection of coins and medals, is a discipline with a broad capacity to represent a historic testimony of commercial exchanges and transactions among social groups. These exchanges and interactions have a relevance that extends beyond the economic history of a group of people as they represent the fundamental story of what happens between human beings, and reveal their unequal negotiating ability in their desire to maximize their own well-being.
This book, as did its predecessor 8 Reales Cobs of Potosi (2006), maintains a treatment and study of these coins not only as pieces described in detail from the perspective of the collector, but also as artifacts of historic value that engage “the socioeconomic and political context of the times” (9). Similarly, the descriptions for the majority of coins included is circumscribed to the silver cobs of 8 Reales, given that its limited monetary circulation has enabled their excellent preservation over time. The fundamental role these cobs of 8 Reales played within the monetary system of Spanish America should also be noted; these coins were adopted as a means to “effectuate remittances to Europe and payments of large transactions” (277) and as a form of refuge to accumulate wealth. This study also represents the results of more recent research about Potosi’s silver coinage that describes and illustrates the majority of cases in which the assayers’ initials were re-engraved during the operating years of the Potosi Mint, and includes an account of the essential changes in coin design that developed over their 200-year production.
During those 200 years of production, few assayers minted coins, avoiding reuse of the dies from previous assayers. As a result, a close examination of those cases that could otherwise be seen as anomalies is important. For example, the combination of assayers’ initials Z (for Pedro Zambrano) over initial V (for Jerónimo Velásquez) does not exists because it probably never happened, given that the latter assayer’s trial and execution incriminated all dies bearing his initials. Similarly, the creation of a completely new design in 1652 represents a period of transition that illustrates the response to new administrative dispositions from the crown seeking to control cob production and to a mercantile repositioning of the colonial coinage. In addition, it is possible that other specific cases, where the absence of pieces could be misinterpreted as a lack of re-engraving practices, may exist. Indeed, there are technical aspects in the study of these cobs that often render the task difficult and can lead to misinterpretation. For example, there are pieces that were minted during periods of poor engraving practices and as a result their designs are of difficult visualization. Moreover, gaps of information are often not verifiable due to the precarious documentation available today, most of which originates in chronicles and narrative accounts. An example of the latter is the case of monogram TR-FR-TFR.
This book should therefore be approached as a basis from which to expand the study of the re-engraving practice of one assayer’s initial over a predecessor’s, on hand-made cobs, and hopes to encourage a continued search for new evidence on the topic, whether it be generated from the numismatic interest of collectors or from the broader disciplinary social sciences framework.
Eight Reals Cobs of Potosi, 2006
Book by Emilio Paoletti with forward by Daniel Sedgwick. Translated by Maria Woolson from Spanish... more Book by Emilio Paoletti with forward by Daniel Sedgwick. Translated by Maria Woolson from Spanish to English, including some cultural and historic research collaborations by Maria Woolson to the original Spanish manuscript.
Reviews by Maria Alessandra Woolson
The Latin American Ecocultural Reader. Edited by Gisela Heffes and Jennifer French
ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
For some years, the expanding field of ecocriticism, despite its distinctive intersectionality am... more For some years, the expanding field of ecocriticism, despite its distinctive intersectionality among disciplines, seemed to sidestep a comprehensive understanding of Latin American representation as a unique corpus, endowed with distinct qualities in ecological thought. Co- edited by Jennifer French and Gisela Heffes, The Latin American Ecocultural Reader is an archival masterwork that remedies that void and invites readers to experience the cultural fabric of the region from an ecocritical perspective. Latin America is a region rich in diverse forms of practical and adaptive knowledge developed across its many cultures. What unique facets of the region’s coevolution with the natural world have come to define a particular environmental thought? How have transformations of the land and the biocultural diversity of its territories impacted the region’s cultures and the wellbeing of communities? And what is the outcome today of a colonial legacy that continues to be reinforced in a global economic system, when the world faces unprecedented transformations? These are some of the questions that this volume illuminates.
Review: Security, Risk and the Biometric State: Governing Borders and Bodies
Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 2011
Benjamin Mueller’s Security, Risk and the Biometric State, Governing Borders and Bodies, is a tho... more Benjamin Mueller’s Security, Risk and the Biometric State, Governing Borders and Bodies, is a thought-provoking book that offers powerful insight into the dynamics of governance, biopolitics and international relations. Through careful examination of the relationship between risk and biometrics, seen as central constituents of the practices for securing national sovereignty, the book engages directly with some of the most contentious aspects surrounding its implications for security and contemporary life. In particular, Muller observes an evolving form of governing through modern technologies that, in shaping a culture of risk aversion and fostering a rise in centralized state authority, are changing the border’s relations with the public. The author approaches the subject in a novel way and carefully interconnects topics of modern governance, liberal power and shifts in traditional understanding of liberty and agency to raise critical questions about cultural and sociopolitical ramifications of risk management practices that rely on sophisticated technologies. Through a dynamic framing the book weaves together notions of risk, security, technology and identity to give rise to the concept of the “Biometric State,” in which these practices of encoding bodies foster a shift in governance. Muller builds this idea upon Foucault’s work on biopolitics, by revisiting the shift from governing a territory to governing of the population, and takes us beyond conventional notions of the modern liberal State to critically explore its current preoccupation with “power over life” as a contemporary deployment of biopolitics. As a consequence, the author observes a transformation of border security into border management through “biometric” or measured bodies. This argument is successfully supported by case studies that further demonstrate how the biometric state has emerged from a “risk society” that consents to governing uncertainty through the technologization of security. International discourses of globalization in the post 9–11 politics of the United States have presented conflicting metaphors of sovereignty, including conceptualizations of highly porous borders meant to guarantee global market flows while simultaneously advancing a thickening of the same borders to secure citizens from perceived catastrophic dangers. While the book addresses this contradiction, its main objective is to depict the emergence and proliferation of a border transformed into a virtual form that extends across the political landscape of the country. In engaging the analysis with the challenges this phenomenon poses for the politics of citizenship and immigration, the discussion interrogates implications for a shifting political imagination that may have already developed into new forms of social sorting. The multilayered cultural and social fabric of the population and the new ubiquitous nature of this contemporary border, reveal the need to reframe conceptual analysis about the borderlands where actual resources, experience and expertise are eclipsed by the shadow of a new “zero-risk” approach to security. Muller explains how “reliance on risk management in border security leads inevitably to a “zero risk” approach [that] acts most acutely to the detriment of the long-standing trans-border cultural, political, and market relations that make the borderland so robust.” He concludes that trends since 9–11 of centralizing control have disempowered the border region, threatening local knowledge and identity. Organized in eight generally brief chapters, the book effectively combines interdisciplinary theory and empirical evidence. The first four chapters provide an overview of the theoretical concepts that shape the author’s ideas, while the latter ones comprehensively integrate case studies to ground the discussion both temporally and spatially. For example, specific cases of the Canada-US border, and Iraq situate otherwise abstract concepts and temper a potentially simplified reading of the text. Muller’s treatment of the subject provides a level of detail appropriate for students and researchers seeking a well-grounded introduction to the topics, an approach that should also be a valuable resource for analysts interested in the broader implications of these modes of border security. Throughout the book the reader experiences a kind of maturation of the author’s original view-points from a primarily theoretical narrative with many technical terms and scholarly concepts of the earlier chapters, to the increased fluidity in the case studies. Therefore the power of the original ideas that the book contributes may not always be readily accessible to the reader until the later chapters where...
Papers by Maria Alessandra Woolson
Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 2018
At the turn of the twenty-first century ecocriticism has moved beyond its tradition of analyzing ... more At the turn of the twenty-first century ecocriticism has moved beyond its tradition of analyzing nature writing to integrate new forms of expression that shift visibility towards issues of temporality, environmental justice, and environmental ethics. This paper looks at the most recent open-space installations of Mexican sculptor Helen Escobedo, examining how her artworks act as physical and discursive interventions capable of disrupting encoded modes of modes of knowing about space and environment. These simulating installations are contextually conceived and situated in dialogue with the community where each piece was envisioned; they functions as an assemblage of referential information bound to be reconstituted, reinterpreted and resignified by the observer. In doing this, Escobedo reveals a profound understanding that change and sustainable futures can only be envisioned when integrating ourselves with Others, un "nos y otros que es un nosotros" of communal experience.
In 2017, the European Alps lost more than 5 feet of water-equivalent glacier mass. In 2018, more ... more In 2017, the European Alps lost more than 5 feet of water-equivalent glacier mass. In 2018, more than 8,000 fires burned on nearly 2 million acres across California. In 2019, Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami people, warned an audience of US-based scholars gathered in Cambridge, MA, of the imminent danger his people and the rainforest faced1. A month later Amazonia burned. As I write these lines, Australia is in flames. In the context of these twenty-first century challenges, the task of envisioning and planning for sustainable societies is center stage. We also face a time of volatile political divisions in which our democracies are being tested by how they respond to environmentally-driven migrations, endemic poverty, and inequality, and are in some cases failing when measured against principles of human rights. The inequality gap has been widening progressively since the 1970s (Sachs, 2010). What does a sustainable future look like for Latin America? What is un...
From management to governance: rethinking water policy and privatization on Easter Island
The Politics of Fresh Water, 2016
Published in The Politics of Freshwater. Access, Conflict and Identity. Tamar Mayer & Cat... more Published in The Politics of Freshwater. Access, Conflict and Identity. Tamar Mayer & Catherine Ashcraft, Eds. Abingdon: Rutledge. Privatization of water has been advanced by national governments and international lending agencies as the most effective approach to managing water quality, quantity and access. This chapter examines the contradictions between institutional practices organized around water privatization as a universal set of technical problems to be solved, and the ecological and cultural processes that constitute water systems, which can only be comprehensibly addressed through water governance. The Chilean case of Easter Island highlights the problems of managing water strictly as an economic good that treats the resource independently from its socio-cultural context and related ecological and social challenges.
Diálogo de saberes, sustentabilidad y el pensamiento ambiental Latinoamericano. Una conversación con Enrique Leff
Voces silenciadas, sabiduría olvidada. Limitaciones discursivas de la representación cultural en la era de la globalización. [Silenced Voices, Forgotten Wisdom. Discursive Limitations of Cultural Representation in the Era of Globalization]
Conference proceedings.
Presented at first meeting of LASA Southern Cone, Santiago de Chile.
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Papers and Articles by Maria Alessandra Woolson
This analysis draws from over 10 years of research on pedagogical approaches to sustainability and recent experiences from students in environmental humanities courses focused on Latin America. Teaching environmental humanities becomes an opportunity to view the concept of sustainability as a cultural project that engages with many of the enduring “big questions” of what it means to be human on this planet. As a result, environmental ethics becomes an entry point to discussions about some of the big questions of the present and the outlook for the future, and sees social and intellectual tensions about the environment as symptomatic of a broader crisis of modernity, a crisis of modern thought.
Resumen A fines del milenio, la ecocrítica ha superado su tradición analítica de nature writing para integrar nuevas formas de expresión que confieren visibilidad a cuestiones de temporalidad, justicia y ética ambiental. Este artículo analiza las instalaciones en espacios abiertos de los últimos quince años de vida de la escultora mexicana Helen Escobedo y observa cómo sus obras resultan ser intervenciones tanto físicas como discursivas que alteran los modos de codificación que asignamos al espacio y al medioambiente. Contextualmente concebidas, estéticamente estimulantes y situadas en diálogo con la comunidad donde se concibieron, estas instalaciones funcionan como un conjunto de información referencial destinada a ser reconstituida, reinterpretada y resignificada por el observador. De este modo, Escobedo revela una profunda comprensión de que todo cambio hacia un futuro sostenible solo pueden concebirse por medio de una integración colectiva, un "nos y otros que es un nosotros" de la experiencia comunitaria. Palabras clave: ecocrítica, instalaciones artísticas, estudios de performance, sustentabilidad, América latina.
Chapters in Scholarly Books by Maria Alessandra Woolson
Privatization of water has been advanced by national governments and international lending agencies as the most effective approach to managing water quality, quantity and access. This chapter examines the contradictions between institutional practices organized around water privatization as a universal set of technical problems to be solved, and the ecological and cultural processes that constitute water systems, which can only be comprehensibly addressed through water governance. The Chilean case of Easter Island highlights the problems of managing water strictly as an economic good that treats the resource independently from its socio-cultural context and related ecological and social challenges.
Books by Maria Alessandra Woolson
ABSTRACT
Re-engraving Assayer's Initials in Potosi Cobs examines the coinage minted in Potosi between 1576-1773, to trace the overlap and transitions between assayers. Few assayers minted coins without reusing previous dies. The resulting re-engraved pieces are here described in detail, while also treated as historic artifacts, thus revealing both the socioeconomic and the political context of its time.
PREFACE
Numismatics, or the study and collection of coins and medals, is a discipline with a broad capacity to represent a historic testimony of commercial exchanges and transactions among social groups. These exchanges and interactions have a relevance that extends beyond the economic history of a group of people as they represent the fundamental story of what happens between human beings, and reveal their unequal negotiating ability in their desire to maximize their own well-being.
This book, as did its predecessor 8 Reales Cobs of Potosi (2006), maintains a treatment and study of these coins not only as pieces described in detail from the perspective of the collector, but also as artifacts of historic value that engage “the socioeconomic and political context of the times” (9). Similarly, the descriptions for the majority of coins included is circumscribed to the silver cobs of 8 Reales, given that its limited monetary circulation has enabled their excellent preservation over time. The fundamental role these cobs of 8 Reales played within the monetary system of Spanish America should also be noted; these coins were adopted as a means to “effectuate remittances to Europe and payments of large transactions” (277) and as a form of refuge to accumulate wealth. This study also represents the results of more recent research about Potosi’s silver coinage that describes and illustrates the majority of cases in which the assayers’ initials were re-engraved during the operating years of the Potosi Mint, and includes an account of the essential changes in coin design that developed over their 200-year production.
During those 200 years of production, few assayers minted coins, avoiding reuse of the dies from previous assayers. As a result, a close examination of those cases that could otherwise be seen as anomalies is important. For example, the combination of assayers’ initials Z (for Pedro Zambrano) over initial V (for Jerónimo Velásquez) does not exists because it probably never happened, given that the latter assayer’s trial and execution incriminated all dies bearing his initials. Similarly, the creation of a completely new design in 1652 represents a period of transition that illustrates the response to new administrative dispositions from the crown seeking to control cob production and to a mercantile repositioning of the colonial coinage. In addition, it is possible that other specific cases, where the absence of pieces could be misinterpreted as a lack of re-engraving practices, may exist. Indeed, there are technical aspects in the study of these cobs that often render the task difficult and can lead to misinterpretation. For example, there are pieces that were minted during periods of poor engraving practices and as a result their designs are of difficult visualization. Moreover, gaps of information are often not verifiable due to the precarious documentation available today, most of which originates in chronicles and narrative accounts. An example of the latter is the case of monogram TR-FR-TFR.
This book should therefore be approached as a basis from which to expand the study of the re-engraving practice of one assayer’s initial over a predecessor’s, on hand-made cobs, and hopes to encourage a continued search for new evidence on the topic, whether it be generated from the numismatic interest of collectors or from the broader disciplinary social sciences framework.
Reviews by Maria Alessandra Woolson
Papers by Maria Alessandra Woolson