Yana Stainova | The Politics of Joy: Collective Art Practices Across Borders

Drawing on ethnographic research with Latinx artists and musicians in East L.A. and Veracruz, Mexico, Yana Stainova traces communities of collective art making across national borders, languages, and generations. She studies how artists articulate and experience a “politics of joy,” insisting on their right to joy in the face of violence, discrimination, and marginalization. By creating together, these artists generate community and enact their dreams for the future.

ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER

Yana Stainova (Ph.D. Brown University) is associate professor in anthropology at McMaster University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar interested in art, social inequality, migration, and the lived experience of violence in Latin America. Her award-winning book entitled Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela is an ethnography of young Venezuelan musicians who participate in El Sistema–a state-funded initiative that brings free classical music education and instruments to one million people in the country–whose musical practices create worlds that escape, rupture, and critique dominant structures of power through modes of enchantment. Her second book project, tentatively titled The Politics of Joy: Collective Art Practices across the US-Mexico Border focuses on Latinx migration and artistic practices in North America. Her work also appears in Current Anthropology, Anthropology and Humanism, Anthropological Quarterly, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, and is featured at yanastainova.com.

DISCUSSANT

Grace Kuipers, Postdoctoral Research Associate, High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology.
 

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This event is open to students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff.

Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.

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Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies

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