Online Talk: Space Aliens and Time Travel: Interdisciplinary Archaeological Perspectives and “Welcome to Portland Oregon”

This is the seventh event in a series of “Conversations in Anthropology” co-organized by the Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies at Vilnius University (VU ATSI) and the Society for Anthropological Sciences-EuroAsia (SASci-EU). Registration (compulsory for participating in “Zoom” platform): forms.gle/1vXsNMrJnfmDJKvc9. This event will be streamed on VU ATSI, VU Faculty of Philosophy (VU Filosofijos fakultetas) “Facebook” pages. Portland, Oregon is located at the confluence of two rivers, on land indigenous to many peoples over thousands of years. With the westward expansion of Euro-descent peoples, an ecologically and spatially alien culture recently displaced the native peoples through colonial practices and pathologies explicit and implicit. Examples include damming the rivers and limiting access to the sacred and economic sites of food procurement, like Celilo Falls on the Columbia river and Willamette Falls on the Willamette, and the creation of large population centers of great numbers of space aliens, like the city of Portland, which excluded other peoples and attempted to secure a racially white supremacist homeland. Yesterday and tomorrow converge as identity and politics manifest in curious ways and from different perspectives, to create the place that is Portland today. Pedro Ferbel-Azcarate, Ph.D. (U Minn 2005) is an assistant professor at the faculty in the Black Studies department at Portland State University, Portland Oregon. Pedro studied with Victor de Munck as a Master’s student in anthropology at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Pedro is an interdisciplinary archaeologist and works on archaeological and anthropological studies of the Caribbean region, with a focus on the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Pedro’s research uncovers the politics of the nation-state in controlling the identity of colonized and globalized people, and the struggle of communities against dominant paradigms including colonialism, racism, classism, sexism, and globalization. Pedro’s teaching philosophy includes student centered learning, reflection and self assessment, and seeing the connection between knowledge, power and action. Pedro has worked on study abroad programs in Mexico, Spain, and the Dominican Republic and is currently focusing on Eastern Cuba. Outside of PSU, he is a co-owner of a local organic corn masa and tortilla company. Discussion will be moderated by Prof. Dr. Victor de Munck.

Zoom registration link: http://forms.gle/1vXsNMrJnfmDJKvc9

Time and Date: December 16, 2021 at 18:00 EET