Monday, Nov. 20, 7:30pm, MonkeyWrench Book, 110 E North Loop.
Dissident Women: Gender and Cultural Politics in Chiapas A Reading and Book Presentation by Shannon Speed, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UT Austin R. Aída Hernández Castillo, Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the Center of Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City Melissa M. Forbis, Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology at UT Austin.
Yielding pivotal new perspectives on the indigenous women of Mexico, Dissident Women: Gender and Cultural Politics in Chiapas (edited by Shannon Speed, R. Aída Hernández Castillo, and Lynn M. Stephen, UT Press, 2006) presents a diverse collection of voices exploring the human rights and gender issues that gained international attention after the first public appearance of the Zapatistas in 1994.
Drawing from studies on topics ranging from the daily life of Zapatista women to the effect of transnational indigenous women in tipping geopolitical scales, this book explores both the personal and global implications of indigenous women’s activism. The Zapatista movement and the Women’s Revolutionary Law, a charter that came to have tremendous symbolic importance for thousands of indigenous women, created the potential for renegotiating gender roles in Zapatista communities. Drawing on the original research of scholars with long-term field experience in a range of Mayan communities in Chiapas and featuring several key documents written by indigenous women articulating their vision, Dissident Women brings fresh insight to the revolutionary crossroads at which Chiapas standsand to the worldwide implications of this economic and political microcosm.