José Aylwin is the Coordinator of the Indigenous Rights Program at
the Universidad de la Frontera in Temuco, Chile. His recent works in the field
include: El acceso de los indígenas a la tierra en los ordenamientos
jurídicos de América Latina: un estudio de casos (2002),
"Conflicts in the Mapuche Territory: Causes and Perspectives," and "Indigenous
Rights in Chile: Advances and Contradictions in the Context of Economic
Globalization." Professor Aylwin is one of the region's major experts on the
legal recognition and protection of indigenous land rights. He argues that the
gradual process by which indigenous peoples were dispossessed of their ancestral
lands was in some countries actually intensified rather than hindered by the
official indigenista and agrarian reform policies that were introduced by
several Latin American countries in the post-World War II period. Professor
Aylwin has pointed out that the historical demand of indigenous peoples for land
has both a material and spiritual component and that the latter is growing in
importance as indigenous peoples and their leaders stress both the political and
symbolic meanings of the recognition of their land rights. The demand now is for
self-determination and autonomy regarding the lands and the natural resources to
which the indigenous peoples relate collectively and to which they have a special
relationship. Professor Aylwin is also the director of Chile's Indigenous
Peoples' Rights Watch. This organization, along with Human Rights Watch, created
a report on the Chilean government's use of anti-terrorism laws threatening
indigenous rights.
Amita Baviskar (Stanford University) is a visiting Associate Professor in
the Cultural and Social Anthropology Department. Her research focuses on the
cultural politics of environment and development. Dr. Baviskar received her PhD in
1992 from Cornell in Development Sociology. Her research addresses environmental
politics, with a focus on social inequality and natural resource conflicts,
environmental and indigenous social movements, the anthropology of development,
post-colonial cities, state formation, and the environment in south Asia. After
teaching at the University of Delhi for almost a decade, she was a Ciriacy-Wantrup
Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She has also taught at Cornell
University.
Baviskar is the author of In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over
Development in the Narmada Valley (Oxford University Press 1995, 2004) and has
edited the anthology Waterlines: The Penguin Book of River Writings (Penguin 2003).
Another edited volume, Waterscapes: The Cultural Politics of a Natural Resource, is
forthcoming from University of Washington Press and Permanent Black. Her research
has been conducted in close association with rights groups in India. Her regular
contributions to newspapers and other public fora express a commitment to political
action and scholarship outside the academy.
Joseph Berra is Executive Director of the Caribbean Central
American Research Council (CCARC), a non-profit activist research institute
focusing on the intersection of race, rights, and resources in the Caribbean
and Central America. As an attorney, Mr. Berra's legal work has involved
advocating for the rights of immigrants, minorities, and indigenous peoples
through litigation, legislative advocacy, and public policy research. From
2000 to 2004 he was in charge of the Immigrant Rights Program Area of the
Southwest Regional Office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund (MALDEF) in San Antonio.
Prior to his position at MALDEF, he was a 1997 National Association of Public
Interest Law (NAPIL) Equal Justice Fellow for work at AYUDA, Inc., of
Washington, D.C. While in Washington, Mr. Berra also worked on a pro-bono
basis with the Center for Justice in International Law (CEJIL) in the
development of cases before the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights.
He spent the summer of 1995 as a public interest law fellow working with the
Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center for Human Rights in Chiapas, Mexico.
Mr. Berra received his JD from St. Mary's University School of Law in 1997.
He also holds an MA in social anthropology from the University of Texas at
Austin, an M.Div. from the Central American University in San Salvador, El
Salvador, and a BA in philosophy from St. Louis University. A former Jesuit
priest, Mr. Berra worked for ten years in Central America in various pastoral
and social ministries of the Central American Province of the Society of Jesus.
Sarah H. Cleveland (UT Law) is the Marrs McLean
Professor in Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where she has been
on the faculty since 1997. A graduate of Yale Law School, her teaching and
scholarly interests include foreign affairs and the Constitution,
international human and labor rights, and federal civil procedure. She holds
her undergraduate degree from Brown University and a Masters degree in history
from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. After
graduating from law school, Cleveland served as a law clerk to Judge Louis F.
Oberdorfer on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia,
and then to Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the Supreme Court of the United
States. She then served two years as a Skadden Fellow with Florida Legal
Services, conducting impact litigation on behalf of Caribbean sugar cane
workers and other migrant workers in the southeastern United States. Her
publications include: "Powers Inherent in Sovereignty: Indians, Aliens,
Territories, and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of Plenary Power Over Foreign
Affairs" (Texas Law Review, 2002); "Human Rights Sanctions and
International Trade: A Theory of Compatibility" (Journal of International
Economic Law, 2002); "Norm Internalization and U.S. Economic Sanctions"
(Yale Journal of International Law, 2001); and "Global Labor Rights
and the Alien Tort Claims Act" (Texas Law Review, 1998).
Allen Cooper (MPP 2003, Princeton) is a J.D. candidate at
the University of Texas where he is a William Wayne Justice Institute Public
Interest Scholar. He previously worked as lead organizer of Austin Interfaith
and as founding director of the West Virginia Organizing Project. Cooper
recently completed a six-month project in Chile investigating the impact of
the creation of private conservation reserves on the land claims of the
indigenous Mapuche people. He plans to pursue a career in human rights
advocacy.
Ariel Dulitzky is a Human Rights Senior Specialist for the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights, where he advises governmental and international
organizations on human rights policies and legal standards. He has more than ten
years experience of working with the Inter-American human rights system. He earned
his law degree from the University of Buenos Aires School of Law and an LL.M. from
Harvard through the Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat Fellowship. One of his many
significant contributions to the work at the IACHR was his work on the creation of
the Special Rapporteurship on Afro-Descendants and Racial Discrimination. He also
played a crucial role in the adoption by the Commission of many decisions dealing
with indigenous people. Prior to joining the IACHR, Dulitzky served as the Latin
America Program Director at the International Human Rights Law Group where he
developed a program on Racial Discrimination in Brazil and oversaw the Law Group's
Program in the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua; the Co-Executive Director of the Center
for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), a non-governmental organization
dedicated to promoting international human rights and the rule of law in Latin
America; and director of CEJIL's regional offices in Central America.
Dulitzky has published several articles on human rights, racial discrimination, and
the rule of law in Latin America. His publications are particularly relevant: The
Indigenous Community: Inter-American System Jurisprudence and Human Rights
Protection (1997), "Perspectives on Human Rights: Social, Economic and Cultural
Rights" (2003), and "A Region in Denial: Racial Discrimination in Latin America"
(2005). He has also taught at the Washington College of Law at American University.
Karen L Engle is W.H. Francis, Jr. Professor in Law and
Director of the Center for Human Rights at The University of Texas School of
Law, where she has taught since 2002. Previously she was Professor of Law at
the University of Utah, where she taught for ten years. She teaches courses in
employment discrimination, public international law and international human
rights. She also teaches specialized human rights seminars, including "Third
World and Feminist Approaches to International Law" and "Human Rights and the
Uses of Culture."
Professor Engle received her J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and
her undergraduate degree from Baylor University. Following law school and a
clerkship with Judge Jerre S. Williams on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals,
Engle returned to Harvard Law School as a post-doctoral Ford Fellow in Public
International Law. During the second year of her fellowship, she also served
as Program Director.
Professor Engle lectures extensively in the U.S. and Europe on identity
politics and international human rights law, and is currently working on a
book on human rights and culture. She is co-editor of After Identity: A
Reader in Law and Culture (Routledge 1992) and author of numerous
articles, the most recent of which include "Feminism and Its (Dis)contents:
Criminalizing War-Time Rape in Bosnia," (forthcoming), "International Human
Rights and Feminisms: When Discourses Keep Meeting" (forthcoming), "The
Construction of Good Aliens and Good Citizens: Legitimizing the War on
Terrorism" (Colorado Law Review), "From Skepticism to Embrace: Human
Rights and the American Anthropological Association from 1947–1999,"
(Human Rights Quarterly, 2001), and "Culture and Human Rights: The
Asian Values Debate in Context" (NYU Journal of International Law &
Policy, 2000). Her 1992 article, "Female Subjects of Public International
Law: Human Rights and the Exotic Other Female" has been reprinted and
excerpted in numerous text books and collections in the U.S. and abroad.
Melissa M. Forbis (UT Anthropology) is a PhD candidate in
Social Anthropology. Her research interests include feminist and gender
theory, neoliberalism, nationalism and indigenous rights. She is currently
completing her dissertation entitled "Gender, Autonomy and Indigenous Rights
in Chiapas, Mexico." Her research for the past eight years on the region has
resulted in a number of invited presentations, including a recent seminar at
the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology in Mexico
City on the new forms of Zapatista governance. Her publications include two
book chapters, book reviews and an article in Spanish under review. She is
also a long-time community organizer focusing on creating alternative
political spaces. Forbis will be a Women's Studies Dissertation Fellow at
UCSB during 2005–06.
Kaushik Ghosh (UT Anthropology and Asian Studies) focuses on South Asia,
colonialism, social movements, and globalization. Dr. Ghosh taught at Vassar in
Fall 2002. He was on the editorial board of Cultural Anthropology.
Previously he was at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC)
and the University of Washington, Seattle. His publications have appeared in
Subaltern Studies and are forthcoming in Positions and Cultural
Anthropology. Having been long involved with ecological and indigenous
peoples' movements in India, Dr. Ghosh has been involved with students in Seattle
in Zapatista Support groups and anti-globalization work. In recent years he has
been working on urban restructuring in India.
Jennifer Goett is a Ph.D. Candidate in Social Anthropology
at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include critical
race theory, subaltern history, nationalism, and afro-descendent and
indigenous land rights in Latin America. She has received research
fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Fulbright
Foundation, and the Tinker Foundation. Ms. Goett conducted dissertation
research with afro-descendent and indigenous communities on the Atlantic
Coast of Nicaragua between 2001 and 2004. In 2003, she coordinated Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) and land use mapping for a World Bank project that
documented Awas Tingni's communal land claim. Additionally, she has worked
as a research consultant for the Ford Foundation, the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP), and Centro de Investigaciones y
Documentación de la Costa Atlántica (CIDCA-UCA) in Nicaragua.
She is currently completing her doctoral dissertation, which is entitled
Race and the Cultural Politics of Creole Resource Rights in Nicaragua,
1786–2003.
Edmund T. Gordon (UT Anthropology) is the Director of the
Center for African and African American Studies and Associate Professor of
Anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests
include culture and power in the African Diaspora, gender studies, critical
race theory, and political economy. His research in these areas has
resulted in a number of publications including "Cultural Politics of Black
Masculinity," Transforming Anthropology, 1997; "The African Diaspora:
Towards an Ethnography of Diasporic Identification," Journal of American
Folklore, 1999; and Disparate Diasporas: Identity and Politics in an
African-Nicaraguan Community, University of Texas Press, 1998. His
current work focuses on race and the struggle for resources among Black
communities in Central America and the Southern U.S.
Charles Hale (UT Anthropology) is Associate Professor of Anthropology and
past Associate Director of the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies
(2000–03), both at the University of Texas. Previously he taught at the University
of California, Davis. He earned his PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University.
He has received research fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Social
Science Research Council (SSRC), and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr.
Hale currently serves on the Regional Advisory Committee for Latin America of the
SSRC. He is author of Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the
Nicaraguan State, 1894–1987 (1994); co-editor (with Gustavo Palma and Clara
Arenas) of Racismo en Guatemala: Abriendo debate sobre un tema tabú; and
co-editor (with Jeffrey Gould and Darío Euraque) of Memorias del mestizaje:
Cultura y política en Centroamérica, 1920 al presente
(forthcoming). He also is author of numerous articles on identity politics, racism,
ethnic conflict, and the status of indigenous peoples in Latin America.
Dr. Hale has served as principal investigator on a series of activist research
projects focused on black and indigenous land rights in Central America. These
involve working with inter-disciplinary teams of researchers and community leaders
to document land claims, and then to create maps of those claims, using handheld
GPS systems and computer-based cartography. Two of these projects (Nicaragua
1997–98 and Honduras 2001–02) were funded by the World Bank; he
presently co-directs another funded by the Ford Foundation. Hale also has served
as an expert witness in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights case Awas
Tingni v. Government of Nicaragua, which resulted in a landmark decision in
favor of indigenous community land rights.
Candis Hamilton is an attorney in the Chambers of Gifford, Thompson &
Bright in Jamaica. Lord Anthony Gifford, who heads the Chambers, is one of
Jamaica's leading human rights attorneys. She also works part-time as a consultant
for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, on a promotional project in the
Caribbean. She also serves as Legal Director on the board of the Jamaica
Environment Trust (JET), a non-profit organization conducting Jamaica's largest
environmental education program. Ms. Hamilton graduated magna cum laude from
Howard University, where she was inducted into the national honor society Phi Beta
Kappa. She received a law degree from the University of Miami School of Law and a
Master's in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from New York University. Since
graduating from law school her work has focused on community development, racial
discrimination, and human rights projects in South Africa and Jamaica. She spent
three years as a Legal Field Officer in Nicaragua with the Washington, D.C.-based
International Human Rights Law Group, where she assisted the Latin American team
developing a capacity-building and advocacy project on communal lands for
indigenous and Afro-Caribbean communities of the Autonomous Region of the South
Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. She participated in the University of Florida Law
School's 2001 Costa Rica Program and assisted in developing its Caribbean
initiative. Ms. Hamilton was chosen for the IACHR Delegation to Haiti, conducting
the on-site visit in 2004.
Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo (CIESAS, Mexico, D.F.) is an
anthropologist and activist who lived for fifteen years in Chiapas. She earned
her doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. She currently works
under the auspices of CIESAS, the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in
Social Anthropology. One of her projects involves exploring new and old
opportunities for power through indigenous women, collective organization, and
daily resistance by analyzing the comparative histories of indigenous women's
initiatives in Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Veracruz. She has worked
extensively in the past on exploring plural identities in Chiapas as well as the
human rights of Guatemalan refugees in Mexico. Hernandez Castillo lectured at the
University of London Instititute of Latin American Studies on "Indigenous Law and
Identity Politics in Mexico: Women's Struggles in a Multicultural Nation" and
"Indigenous Cosmovision as an Element of Resistance in the Struggles of
Indigenous Women in Mesoamerica." She is also on the Humanities Awards
Commission for the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias. Her publications include:
El Estado y los indígenas en tiempos del PAN: neoindigenismo, identidad
y legalidad (2004), Mayan Lives, Mayan Utopias: the Indigenous Peoples of
Chiapas and the Zapatista Rebellion (2003); and The Other Word: Women and
Violence in Chiapas Before and After Acteal (2001).
Juliet Hooker is an Assistant Professor of Government at
The University of Texas at Austin. She received her PhD in Government from
Cornell University. Her current research focuses on multicultural citizenship
reform in Latin America, black and indigenous politics in Central America, and
nationalism and civic solidarity. She is currently completing a book
manuscript on the construction of political solidarity in multiracial and
multicultural societies. She has published articles (forthcoming in 2005)
analyzing the disparity in collective rights gained by black and indigenous
groups in Latin America since the adoption of multicultural citizenship
reforms, and on the persistence of official discourses of mestizo nationalism
in Nicaragua that continue to inhibit the full political inclusion of black
and indigenous costeños despite the adoption of multicultural
citizenship reforms in the 1980s.
William Maurer (UC Irvine) has provoked questions about deeply held beliefs
about the nature of law and economy. Maurer's research queries narratives of
globalization's effects by looking into its fabrication, through the entanglements
of subjects and objects of law, property, and value that make it up. His first
book, on the colonial transformation of the British Virgin Islands from a backwater
of small-scale farmers and traders to a booming offshore financial services center,
led him to question the cultural ramifications of finance capital, the legal
creation of objects of property held to "move" in new transnational circuits, and
the conceptions of mobility animating contemporary financial forms. His second
book, Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason
(Princeton 2005) explores financial alternatives and the relationship between the
problem of money and the problem of social critique. Professor Maurer's research
has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage
Foundation. He was a co-recipient of the Law and Society Association Article Prize
in 2003 for "In the Mirror: The Legitimation Work of Globalization," Law and Social
Inquiry (2003). His most recent writings include "Due Diligence and 'Reasonable
Man,' Offshore," Cultural Anthropology (in press 2005); "Introduction: Ethnographic
Emergences," American Anthropologist (2005); "The Cultural Power of Law?
Conjunctive Readings," Law and Society Review (2004); and "Ungrounding Knowledges
Offshore: Caribbean Studies, Disciplinarity and Critique," in Comparative American
Studies (2004).
Sally Engle Merry is Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas
and Professor of Anthropology at Wellesley College. In September 2005 she will
move to New York University. Her current research explores how international human
rights law is interpreted in China, India, Nigeria, and Peru. Her recent book,
Human Rights and Gender Violence in the New World Order: Translating Culture,
will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2005. She has recently
published articles on women's human rights, violence against women, and the process
of localizing human rights. Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of Law
(Princeton University Press, 2000), received the 2001 J. Willard Hurst Prize from
the Law and Society Association. Her other books are Law and Empire in the
Pacific: Hawai'i and Fiji (co-edited with Donald Brenneis, School of American
Research Press, 2004), The Possibility of Popular Justice: A Case Study of American
Community Mediation (co-edited with Neal Milner, University of Michigan Press,
1993), Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working Class
Americans (University of Chicago Press, 1990), and Urban Danger: Life in a
Neighborhood of Strangers (Temple University Press, 1981). She is past president
of the Law and Society Association and the Association for Political and Legal
Anthropology.
Vivian Newdick is a graduate student in the Department of
Anthropology at UT Austin. She came to anthropology after seven years' work in
Chiapas, Mexico, with indigenous and economic rights movements. Her research
currently concerns feminist theory, sexual violence, and human rights within empire.
A recent paper on this topic, tentatively titled "The Indigenous Woman Victim
Subject and Neoliberal Governance in Mexico," is under review for publication.
Bettina Ng'weno (UC Davis) is Assistant Professor in the African American
and African Studies program and has contributed extensively to provoke the
questions raised in this workshop. As an anthropologist who has worked both in
Africa and Latin America, her research focuses on the question of why certain kinds
of property are crucial for governing in modern states. She contributed her
expertise to the World Bank, writing on their participation in the collective
territories titling process for Afro-Colombians. Her current work focuses on
Afro-Colombian territorial claims in the Andes and their status as ethnic groups under
the rubric of the new 1991 Colombian Constitution. As such, she investigates the
relationships among a number of processes including the definition of property and
authority, the categorization of subjects of the state, the creation of political
spaces, and the institutionalization of legal rulings and laws.
Professor Ng'weno has written on ethnic politics in the department of Cauca since
the new constitution, the status of Afro-Colombian collective territories, and the
internal displacement of Afro-Colombians. She has also written on identity, social
continuity and meaning among the Muslim matrilineal Digo of coastal Kenya as they
negotiate the inheritance of land under plural legal systems that recognize
different heirs. Professor Ng'weno is a member of the Black Diaspora Consortium
Project Team, a collaborative effort of scholars and activists committed to
actively working for social justice for (by, and with) African and African
descended populations.
Shannon Speed (UT Anthropology) holds an MA in Latin American Studies from
the University of Texas and an MA and PhD in Anthropology and Native American
Studies from the University of California, Davis. Professor Speed's research
interests include human rights, indigenous rights, globalization, gender, social
justice and resistance movements, and activist research methods.
For the past eight years, Professor Speed's research has been carried out in
Chiapas, Mexico. From 1996–1998, she was the Coordinator of a U.S.-based
non-governmental organization (NGO), Global Exchange, in San Cristóbal de Las Casas,
one of Chiapas's principal cities. Since 1999, she has been an advisor to the
Chiapas Community Human Rights Defenders' Network. This organization was created to
train young indigenous people from regions of conflict in Chiapas to conduct their
own human rights defense work; today, it has twenty-six trained "defenders" whose
work covers more than three-hundred communities. A principal objective in forming
the Defenders' Network was to support the movement for indigenous autonomy in the
region by empowering the indigenous communities and decreasing their dependence on
external sources of support, including NGOs and government agencies. Speed has
published research on the Defenders' Network and human rights work "from the
community," as well as participating as an advisor to the group, an example of the
kind of engaged "activist research" that she advocates.
Professor Speed is currently completing a book entitled Global Discourses on the
Local Terrain: Human Rights and Indigenous Resistance in Chiapas, as well as
co-editing two volumes, Human Rights in the Maya Region: Global Politics, Moral
Engagements, and Culture Contentions and Dissident Women: Gender, Ethnicity and
Power in Chiapas.
Pauline Turner Strong (UT Anthropology) is an Associate Professor in the
Department of Anthropology and the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at the
University of Texas at Austin. She received her BA in Philosophy at Colorado
College, and her MA and PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of
Chicago. Her research centers on the representation and self-representation of
Native American cultures and identities in such venues as literature, film,
museums, sports events, youth organizations, scholarship, and legislation. Her
1999 book, Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial
American Captivity Narratives, won an Honorable Mention for the 2000 Chicago
Folklore Prize. Her articles appear in Cultural Anthropology,
Ethnohistory, Journal of American Folklore, Museum Anthropology,
Social Analysis, and elsewhere. She is President of the Society for
Cultural Anthropology, following terms on the society's Executive Board and
Editorial Board.
Eva Thorne (Brandeis University) dedicates her teaching and
research to international institutions (with a focus on the World Bank and the
Inter-American Development Bank), government and politics of Latin America
(with a focus on Brazil and Central America), and U.S. politics. She is doing
research on the politics of Afro-Latin and indigenous land rights. Prof.
Thorne has carried out research on the subject in Brazil, Honduras, and Panama.
She was recently awarded a grant from the Ford Foundation to hold several
workshops with academics and applied analysts to explore the subject. She
has published a relevant article on "Ethnic and Race-Based Political
Organization and Mobilization in Latin America: Lessons for Public Policy."
Thorne has recently published on Garifuna land rights in Honduras and has an
article under review on the same topic. Her second book project is on black
land rights in Latin America.
Gerald Torres (UT Law) is the H. O. Head Centennial Professor in Real
Property Law at UT. Professor Torres is currently the president of the Association
of American Law Schools (AALS). A leading figure in critical race theory, Torres is
also an expert in agricultural and environmental law. He came to UT Law in 1993
after teaching at The University of Minnesota Law School, where he also served as
associate dean. Torres has served as deputy assistant attorney general for the
Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in
Washington, D.C., and as counsel to then U.S. attorney general Janet Reno.
His latest book, The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming
Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2002) with Harvard law professor Lani Guinier,
was described by Publisher's Weekly as "one of the most provocative and challenging
books on race produced in years." Torres' many articles include "Translation and
Stories" (Harvard Law Review, 2002), "Who Owns the Sky?" (Pace Law Review,
2001) (Garrison Lecture), "Taking and Giving: Police Power, Public Value, and Private
Right" (Environmental Law, 1996), and "Translating Yonnondio by Precedent and
Evidence: The Mashpee Indian Case" (Duke Law Journal, 1990).
Torres has served on the board of the Environmental Law Institute and the National
Petroleum Council and on EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council. He
is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Law Institute.
Torres was honored with the 2004 Legal Service Award from the Mexican American
Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) for his work to advance the legal
rights of Latinos. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford law
schools.
Rebecca Tsosie (Arizona State University) is the Lincoln Professor of Native
American Law & Ethics at Arizona State University Law School. She is also
Executive Director of ASUs Indian Legal Program and Affiliate Professor of the
American Indian Studies Program. She serves as a Supreme Court Justice for Fort
McDowell Yavapai Nation. Professor Tsosie teaches in the areas of Indian law,
Property, Bioethics, and Critical Race Theory, and she is the author of several
articles dealing with cultural resources, environmental policy, and cultural
pluralism. She is the recipient of the American Bar Association's "2002 Spirit of
Excellence Award." Professor Tsosie has given a number of presentations this year,
including the keynote address at the Asian-Pacific Law and Policy Journal's
Symposium at the U of Hawaii on "Protecting Indigenous Identities: Struggles and
Strategies Under International and Comparative Law." The title of her keynote
address was: "What does it mean 'To Build a Nation?': Reimagining Indigenous
Political Identity in an Era of Self-Determination."
Kamala Visweswaran (UT Anthropology) dedicates herself
to social anthropology, feminist theory and ethnography, critical
historiography, nationalism; and South Asia. A cultural anthropologist by
training, Dr. Visweswaran is interdisciplinary in her work. While a Radcliffe
Institute Fellow 2001–02, she explored how the identification of women
with community has gendered the subject of law, influencing the formulation of
women's rights in colonial and postcolonial India. Her awards include two
Fulbright fellowships to India and a Sawyer Seminar Mellon fellowship at the
University of Chicago.