5 de Mayo Celebration at Local School

The Alexander Elementary School's 5th grade social studies classes celebrate "el 5 de mayo" on Monday with "La raspa", a mariachi band of school kids, song, dance and tortillas y salsa. They worked hard to decorate their hallway with paper flowers and pictures of the celebration and Mexican history. They learned about the victorious day when the Mexican army beat Napoleon's army in Puebla, el 5 de mayo, 1862.

Student Budget Worksheet
for study in Brazil on Portuguese Language and Culture

Program Dates: June 29 - August 2, 2008

Billed by OU:

Program Fee includes: International Health Insurance, lodging, in-country transportation, and instructional and administrative costs

Total Out-of-Pocket Costs:*

 Click here to download program description.

*Please note that the above out-of-pocket costs are estimates and based only on funds needed to participate fully on the program. Prior to departure you should adjust your individual budget to include the cost of additional travel and/or time spent abroad.

7th Annual Ohio Latin Americanist Conference in Retrospect
(Linda Ellersick)

The Latin Americanist Conference this year took place at Ohio University in Athens after being held at Ohio State University for six years. There was an amazing turnout of students and professors alike from different parts of the world, specializing in various areas of study. Each session was packed beyond its limits. As an Ohio University graduate student in the Latin American Studies department, it was nice to have the “home court advantage.” It was the first time many of the students from Latin American Studies, including myself, and other departments presented proposals for areas of research. It was definitely an advantage to be familiar with the rooms, space, and technology available. With several different topics being discussed throughout the day, such as literature, economics, immigration, politics, art, and human rights, the conference offered something for every interest in Latin America. The keynote speaker at lunch, Eliana Rivero, presented a topic of Latin America relevant to everybody’s lives—media, specifically television. This really showed the diversity of Latin American subjects in today’s world. The success of this year’s Latin Americanist Conference raises excitement for at least the next two future conferences to be held at Ohio University.

OLAC Student Essay Prize Awarded

Dr. José Delgado and Dr. Betsy Partyka are thrilled to announce that this year’s OLAC Student Essay Prize sponsored by OSU’s Donna Guy will be awarded to: Melanie Miller of OSU and Julia Nogueira of OU. Both of these papers were outstanding both in their format and content. We look forward to offering this prize again at next year’s conference.

Miller: The Discontinuance of Environmental Technologies in the Humid Tropics of Costa Rica: Results from a Qualitative Survey

Nogueira: The Centenary of the Discovery of Chagas Disease: Creating a Prevention Communication Strategy

Photographic highlights of the
7th Ohio latin Americanist Conference, 2008

Click HERE to see more photos...

This month’s LAS faculty profile features:

Dr. Ann Freter-Abrams

Dr. Ann Freter-Abrams is a professor of anthropology here at Ohio University.  She started teaching in 1986.  She and her husband, Dr. Elliot Abrams are one of the first couples hired nearly simultaneously to the Sociology and Anthropology department.  Her academic career began in math and chemistry at the University of San Diego, but while completing her undergraduate studies she became captivated by the field of anthropology and changed her focus.

She earned her Master’s degree at the University of Houston, writing her thesis on the socio-political lineages of the Quiche Maya.  Her research was based on ceramic markers and artifacts.  She examined these in the lab while living in Santa Cruz de Quiche for three months until her group was asked to leave the region due to political upheaval in 1979. 

Dr. Freter-Abrams continued her academic career completing her doctorate at Penn State.  Her area of focus was on the rural settlements at the Mayan center of Copan.  Her dissertation specifically looked at the Mayan collapse by surveying the 4705 mounds outside the urban center of the city.  The popular argument, at the time she wrote her dissertation, stated that the collapse of the Maya was relatively quick.  Through her research she proved that it was more protracted, lasting up to 400 years as opposed to 200.  Initially her research was viewed as controversial, but is now commonly included as a reference to the research being done on the Mayan collapse.

She has continued working with the data from Copan, putting it into GIS (Geographical Information System) to do more complex ecological analysis. 

While teaching, Dr. Freter-Abrams engages her students by way of her abundant knowledge and experience, demonstrating a sincere enthusiasm of the field and the development of her students.       

Her current courses are:

ANTH 345/545           Gender Cross-Cultural Perspective
ANTH 367/567           South American Prehistory
ANTH 378/578           Human Ecology
ANTH 363/563           Gender in Prehistory
ANTH 494/594           Seminar in Human Ecology

Ariaster Baumgratz Chimeli
Assistant Professor of Economics
Ohio University
Department of Economics
319 Bentley Hall Annex
Athens, OH 45701
Phone: (740) 593-9849
Fax: (740) 593-0181

Dr. Chimeli is from Aimorés, a city form the interior of Minas Gerais (MG) State in Brazil. He moved to Belo Horizonte, the capital of MG, when he turned seven. He lived there until he finished his undergrad studies. After that, he moved to the U.S. and he has been living there for 13 years.
His interest in economics started when he was in high school. He liked some subjects, such as history, geography, math and physics. According to him, economics would be a way to combine and analyze all these areas. At that time, he did not know much about economics. However, he knew that it was different from business administration and that it attempted to analyze social phenomena. He enjoyed his choice particularly after he was exposed to this discipline.
During his undergrad course, Chimeli did an internship in an environmental consultant firm in Brazil. There he learned about the necessity of economic analysis in the decision making process that involved environmental impact, such as projects and public policies. At that point he started to do some research in this area, given that in Brazil there were no economic courses focused on the environment. His undergrad monograph used economic techniques to analyze the environmental-economic feature of the valley of the Piracicaba River in MG. His monograph was well accepted and it received two awards. This was the incentive Chimeli needed to further his research in this field.
Since Brazil did not offer any courses on economics of the environment, he came to the US to do his masters degree and his doctorate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After he finished his doctorate, he received an opportunity to do his post-doctorate at Columbia University in New York. Both his doctorate and post-doctorate theses focused on economic development. This is his research area of specialization. After he finished his post-doctorate, the economic department of Ohio University (OU) was looking for an economist specialized in environment and development. “It fit like a glove.” Since 2003 he has been teaching four classes at OU: Fundamentals of Microeconomics, Intermediate Microeconomics, Economics of Environment, and Economics of Energy.
His area of interest is environment and development. The theory part of his research investigates the process of economic growth and its consequences to environmental quality. He has written some theoretical articles about environmental and market economies, economies of transition of the Soviet Union, and a theoretical critique about the empirical works on the relation between growth and environment. He has also worked with climatic variability and prediction of its effect in the Ceará state in Brazil. Currently, he is doing research on international markets of wood and deforestation of tropical forests.

Dr. Amado José Láscar

Dr. Amado José Láscar was born in Santiago, Chile in 1956. Since 2002, he has been an assistant professor of the Modern Languages Department and the Latin American Studies Program at Ohio University.  His specializations are 19th Century to Contemporary Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies, Indigenous Literature and Cultural Studies, the Theory and Ideology of the Nation-State, and the Theory of War.

His academic background includes: a Ph.D. in Philosophy from University of Oregon (2002), an M.A. with honors from University of New South Wales, Australia (1997), two Bachelor degrees in Accounting (1984) and Aesthetics (1989) from the University of Chile and la Católica, and four poetry books published; Penúltima Década (1983), Traspuerta (1984), Balneario(1987), La Enorme Trompa del C-5 (2007). He has also published literary and scholarly works through books, articles, and journal publications, and has done some work with documentary films. Currently, he is writing two books; Onces: Colonialidad, Democracia & Pacificación (Elevens: Colonial issues, Democracy & Pacification) and Manfritz in the West.  During his academic career at OU, he has received awards such as: the Faculty Development Award (2003), the Arts and Sciences Jr. Faculty Endowment Award (2003), and the Sociedad Nacional Honoraria Hispánica, Socio Honorario (2007).

As an LAS professor, he believes this program provides fundamental interdisciplinary elements for understanding Latin America’s interrelations and the contemporary problems affecting each country. He thinks that the quality courses throughout the disciplines offer possibilities for both intellectual preparation and commitment, as well as awareness in favor of Latin America.  As an LAS program faculty member, he has plenty of space for researching, teaching, and learning. He believes that teaching is the ability to express articulated knowledge, where both empathy and reciprocal learning are fundamental educational aspects.  He conceives education as a social tool for collective changes and one of the key elements to solve inequality and injustice among countries and states, and that education in our times should be the deconstruction of acquired knowledge in order to rebuild it.

As a literature specialist, he believes that by studying, it is possible to decode cultural and emblematic symbols inherent in every society. Based on this, his humanistic approach teaches the cultural codes of Latin American countries and the decoding of the marvelous reality of their cultures.  European and American authors, along with the distinguished Latin American literature tradition, have influenced his aesthetic preferences. (Tatiana Argüello)

Click here to see past faculty profiles

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Welcome Incoming Students
for 2007-08!

Click here to see the list of incoming students.

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