The Chatino people from Oaxaca, Mexico, believe that the departed begin a new life that is parallel to the world of the living, known in the Chatino language as Jlya^G.  In order to reach Jlya^G, the recently departed must traverse on a treacherous path that goes through mountains, rivers, and towns. Jlya^G  is a metaphysical place that corresponds to an actual location in our plane of existence found towards the northern part of the Chatino region in the municipality of Zenzontepec (coordinates 16° 32′ 0″ N, 97° 30′ 0″ W). 

Prayers, stories, myths, place, and performance are crucial elements in the practice and belief of the Chatino concept of the dead. In the Chatino town of San Marcos Zacatepec, when an adult dies, family members call an expert to perform a speech called Ti^A Su^A Kna^A or ‘prayer to the dead.’ The Ti^A Su^A Kna^A is recited at the dead person’s wake. The goal of the speech is to guide the dead through the trail of the dead and to encourage them not to come back and taunt their family members, friends, and community members either by showing up in individual’s dreams or appearing as a ghost qu^B tiq^E.

The departed also need to demonstrate endurance, agility, and artistic skills. For example, when they reach a place called Sa^A tqen^A, located in the town of Cieneguilla, San Juan Quiahije (coordinates 16.3000° N, 97.3167° W), the dead have to dance. The dead men, in addition to dancing, must whistle or sing. Women only have to dance. Hence, Chatinos believe that artistic abilities such as dancing, whistling, and singing must be learned and practiced during the course of a person’s lifetime. This presentation will discuss these aspects of Chatino conceptions of the dead and describe the verbal art of the rituals involved as the recently dead move on to Jlya^G.

Emily Burrill is Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Director of the African Studies Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  She is the author of States of Marriage: Gender, Justice, and Rights in Colonial Mali.  She is co-editor of Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa.  Dr. Burrill’s research focuses on the history of marriage and marriage-related practices, and women and citizenship rights in post-colonial Africa.

Anastasia Curwood is Assistant Professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.  She was a Visiting Fellow at the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, Emory University, from 2012-2014.  She is the author of Stormy Weather: Middle-Class African American Marriages Between the Two World Wars.

Srimati Basu is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Kentucky.  She is also a member of the Committee on Social Theory and the Asia Center Affiliates.  Her latest book is The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India.

This panel will present research on the institution of marriage in transnational contexts and the sites of legal and domestic violence within marriage.

Reception to follow in the Alumni Gallery.

Sponsored by the Dept. of Gender & Women's studies and the Gaines Center for the Humanities. 

Susan Bordo is Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and holds the Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities at the University of Kentucky. She is internationally known for her many publications in body studies and history of culture. Her most recent book, The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2013.

Ellen Rosenman is Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She is the co-editor of Other Mothers: Beyond the Victorian Maternal Ideal and author of Unauthorized Pleasures: Accounts of Victorian Erotic Experience.  Dr. Rosenman is interested in the novel and its relationship to other kinds of narratives such as journalism, professional discourses, and conduct books as ways in which cultural values are articulated, challenged, and re-made.

Cristina Alcalde is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Kentucky.  She is also Director of Graduate Studies for Gender and Women's Studies and from 2011-2015 served as Faculty Co-Director of A&S Wired Residential College.  Her 2010 book, The Woman in the Violence: Gender, Poverty, and Resistance in Peru, was recently translated into a Spanish edition.

The editors and authors from the book will discuss how interdisciplinary and intersectional analysis foregrounds feminist inquiry into social movements and political discourses as they migrate from the local to the global and back again.

Please join us for a reception following the panel discussion in the Alumni Gallery. 

Sponsored by the Dept. of Gender & Women's studies and the Gaines Center for the Humanities. 

Students of Frank X Walker’s Eng 607 course will read work inspired by primary documents in the Special Collections.

A reading to celebrate the release of our program's first anthology: "Feel It With Your Eyes: Writing Inspired by the University of Kentucky Art Museum" published by Wind Publications.