12th September: The Water’s Skin: Art and Transformation in Shipibo-Konibo kene
The Water’s Skin: Art and Transformation in Shipibo-Konibo kene (Luisa Elvira Belaunde, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos)
Location: CAS Library/ Seminar Room
Date: 12.9.22
Time: 17.00-18.30
Luisa Elvira Belaunde is Professor in Anthropology at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima, Peru. She has conducted ethnography amongst indigenous Amazonian peoples of Peru, drawing comparative explorations of their gender-based understandings of personhood, body and blood. Her original work for her PhD in Anthropology at the University of London concerned these issues, resulting in the book Viviendo bien: género y fertilidad entre los airo pai de la Amazonía peruana (2001), republished in 2021. She is the author of El Recuerdo de Luna: género, sangre y memoria entre los pueblos Amazónicos and papers on Amazonian constructs of gender dimorphism and gender shifting derived from their shamanistic perspectives and temporalities. Her work also focuses upon Amazonian women´s arts, especially design painting and ceramics, currently sustaining both women´s community empowerment and access to economic resources through the craft market, state recognition and patrimonialization, rural-urban migration and family investment in children´s schooling and higher education. Her more recent publications, such as Sexualidades amazónicas: géneros, alteridades y deseos, investigate changing desires criss-crossing relationship of alterity, colonial sexual violence and Amazonian women´s struggle for territory and political representation. She was co-curator of the online exhibition “Amerindian Voices” and is currently participating in the second phase of this project, during which she will visit the University of St-Andrews from 5th September to 13thSeptember 2022.