About Dispossessions in the Americas
Dispossessions in the Americas (DIA) is a transdisciplinary project that combines research, teaching, and community engagement led by faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. The project began in 2021, generously funded by a Just Futures Initiative grant from the Mellon Foundation. DIA brings together scholars, artists, activists, community members, and students from many parts of Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Canada.
Supporting creative and collaborative new work, the project seeks to document centuries of dispossessions: of bodies, territories, and cultural heritage. DIA also attends to the ways such dispossessions have been resisted by communities and makes space for on-going conversations about healing and repair. Systemic racism today is grounded in these past dispossessions, making the work of tracing them urgent.
Different parts of the project address the way dispossessions can be both material and immaterial, as well as the way they have long been legitimized by colonialist and patriarchal values and institutions. Reimagining our world requires looking both backwards and forwards. It also requires that those of us embedded within educational and research institutions reach out not only to offer access to resources and to teach but also to learn.
The DIA website offers glimpses of the research, artistic exhibits, performances, community engaged activities, and teaching and learning that grew out of our team’s work and that of our collaborators. The site is organized in six “layers” or entry points: Art, Bodies, Cultural Heritage, Curriculum, Maps, and Territories. Contents are searchable using chronology, place, format, Peoples, and authors. Throughout, the depth and creativity allowed by interdisciplinary and hemispheric collaborations offer a path toward new kinds of knowledge production.
The Dispossessions in the Americas Team
Principal Investigator:
Tulia G. Falleti (Coordinator of the Territories and Maps layers)
Grant Manager:
Co-principal Investigators:
Ann Farnsworth-Alvear (Coordinator of the Cultural Heritage layer)
Jonathan D. Katz (Coordinator of the Arts layer)
Michael Z. Levy (Coordinator of the Bodies Layer)
Associate Investigators:
Curriculum Coordinator:
Evelyne Laurent-Perrault (Coordinator of the Curricula layer)
Art Coordinator:
Cartographer:
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Graduate Fellows:
Makiki Reuvers
Erin Wrigthson
Graduate Research Assistants:
Nicholas Brouwer
Matthew Capps
Ana Nadalini Mendes
Chloe Ricks
Daniela Valerio
Undergraduate Research Assistants:
Gabriela Alvarado
Anjali Aralikar
Selene Bonczok Sotelo
Sergio E. Carballido Murcio
Ethan Walin Domnick
Lía Enríquez
Angel Gutierrez
Soleil Hawley
Jeremy Hogue
Keerthi Jayaraman
Elijah Joseph
Keaton Mackey
Thomas Maggiola
Erin Marble
Alexandra Morgan
Lula O’Donnell
Julia Pastor Trujillo
Stacy Pina
Adalyn Richards
Victoria M. Rosa
Candice Shi
Safaya Smallwood
Nadia Sumner
Roxana Wang
Ian Zang
Research Partners throughout the Americas:
Amaya Alvez Marín and Camila Bañales Seguel (Chile)
Obed Arango (CCATE)
Víctor Cabezas, UniAndes and Cartagena Federal (Colombia)
Coletivo Cacos (Brazil)
Natalia Caniguán and Francisca de la Maza (Chile)
Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP), Sao Paolo (Brazil)
Community Museum Partners, Laguna (Belize)
Community Museum Partners, Tihosuco and Oaxaca (Mexico)
Lee Francis 4 (Native Realities Press, United States)
Gliceria Jesus da Silva (Brazil)
DeJusticia (Colombia)
Andrew Greenlee (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaigne)
Grupo de Etnohistoria del Chocó, Quibdó (Colombia and Canada)
Grupo GEMAS and Universidad Nacional de Río Negro (Argentina)
Carmen Medeiros and Radek Sánchez (Bolivia)
Mariana Mora, María Paula Saffón, and Colectiva Documenta desde Abajo (Mexico)
Muntú-Bantú Fundación Social Afro-colombiana (Colombia)
Observatorio de Derechos Humanos de Pueblos Indígenas (Argentina)
Luciana Quispe and Kuntur Vargas (Argentina)
Unidad UNA Salud (Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia)
Curtis Zunigha (Delaware Tribe, United States)
Art Exhibits and Collaborators throughout the Americas:
Deborah Anzinger (Jamaica) and Deborah Thomas (UPenn)
Tania Bruguera (Cuba)
inSURrecciones (Mexico)
Jarana (Argentina)
Leslie Lohman Museum (United States)
Roberto “Mamani Mamani” (Bolivia)
Philadelphia Mural Arts (United States)
Nakoada:Strategies for Modern Art (Brazil)
Las Nietas de Nonó (Puerto Rico)
The Rhea’s Footprint (Panama)
Puerto Rico Negrx (Puerto Rico)
Raíz (Ecuador)
Rivers can exist without waters but not without shores (Peru)
The stealing of the pain (Chile)
Virosis + Stigmata: Carlos Motta (Colombia)
Wrightwood 659 (United States)