Maria del Carmen Suescun Pozas

Associate Professor, Department of History

Brock University

msuescunpozas@brocku.ca

Born in Venezuela to Spanish-Colombian parents and raised in Bogota (Colombia), Maria del Carmen Suescun Pozas trained as a visual artist (B.F.A Concordia 1993) and art historian (M.A. McGill University, 2006), with a joint PhD in History and Art History (McGill, 2005), Maria del Carmen Suescun Pozas held a Postdoctoral position at Université de Montreal (Department d’histoire, 2005-2007) before moving on to a tenure-track position on Latin American history in the Department of History at Brock University (ON) in 2007 where she works as a cultural historian. She is also Faculty in the Social Justice and Equity Studies Program and Studies in Comparative Literature and Art MA Program at Brock.

She is coordinator of the group “Memory, History and Social Change.” Research interests include opening up politics to cultural analysis, thinking central themes in Latin American historiography with the visual field as model, mapping out work on memory in Canada in conjunction with perspectives on Latin America and the Latin American diaspora that are specific to Canada; the Colombian diaspora; oral and public history; and developing community-university initiatives. She recently submitted an application for a SSHRC three-year grant titled “Living and Telling the Nation: Life Stories and National Formation in Cuba” as Principal Investigator.

In Canada, Suescun Pozas coordinates research with colleagues from Brock University and York University. She also collaborates with researchers from the Institute of Social and Cultural Studies PENSAR, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá (Colombia), as well as with Colombian abstract painter Consuelo Manrique. On the front of trans-national collaboration she is also working with historian Camilo Trumper (American Studies, SUNY at Buffalo) on the Visual Culture of the Americas project.

Recent events she has organized include a workshop on memory drawing lessons from Colombia for the Social Justice Forum 2010 at Brock University (35 participants), and the Visual Culture of the Americas 2010 Workshop (with Trumper) held at Brock, a full-day of presentations (23 presenters) co-sponsored by the Humanities Research Institute (Brock University), Brock International, the American-Canadian Internationalization Grant (SUNY at Buffalo), and CRAM Press (an artist collective based in Saint Catharines, ON).

This year she has organized three panels: “Colombia 1930 - 1950: Miradas alternativas para la historia cultural de una sociedad en transformación” for the Congreso Colombiano de Historia (July 26-30, Bogotá), “Latin America Made in Canada” for the UAAC Congress (October 14-16, Guelph), and “Imaging Memory Across Political and Disciplinary Boundaries” for the CALACS. She has also been invited to participate on a discussion on culture as a category of analysis and the historiography of twentieth-century Colombia set up by the organizers of the CCH in Bogota.

She has been recipient of grants from the Humanities Research Institute (Brock University), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2009), FQRSC (2005-2007) and the Max Stern-McCord Museum Fellowship (McGill) (1996-1999), as well a New England Council of Latin American Studies Outstanding Student in Latin American Studies Award (2003). Membership in academic associations include CALACS and UAAC. She is also member of the Micro-history Network (main office based in Budapest) and an affiliate of the Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (Concordia University, Montreal).

Suescun Pozas is the President of the Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CALACS). She is currently working with the Board of Directors on rethinking CALACS’ vision, mission, and partnerships, and to brainstorm strategies for renewal and growth to ensure a bright future for the association. As part of her mandate she is implementing the Outcome Mapping method for planning, monitoring and evaluating development programs created by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Canada) in order to strengthen the association and help redefine its role in Canadian society at large.

Suescun Pozas is currently revising a book manuscript to be published by McGill-Queen’s, a cultural history of 1930s-40s Colombia through an examination of art, politics and gender. She is also working on a book-chapter for Cartographies of Transnationalism (Stites-Mor, ed.), co-editing a special issue for the Revista de Estudios Sociales (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá) with historian Catalina Muñoz from Universidad del Rosario (Bogotá) on the “cultural turn” in Colombian historiography of the 1930s and 1940s, and preparing a proposal for publication titled “Latin America Made in Canada”, a collection of essays that focuses on the works of scholars in the social sciences and humanities, cultural and art institutions and associations as “curators.” She is also member of the editorial board of the Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades, journal of the Academia Colombiana de Historia (the oldest academic journal in Colombia, its first issue came out in 1902).

Graduate Student Supervision:

“Representations of the Former Yugoslav Past: Archival Footage, Oral Sources, and Fictive Histories, 1941-1992.” Maja Srndic (2010). Studies in Comparative Literatures and Art MA Program

“From Reform to Revolution: The Student Movement and Social Change in Cuba, 1918-1959.” Jacob McIntosh (2008). MA in History Program

Please visit the following websites:

Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CALACS)
http://www.can-latam.org/

Affiliate Oral History, Concordia University
http://storytelling.concordia.ca/oralhistory/index.html

Visual Culture of the Americas 2010 Workshop
http://www.brocku.ca/brock-international/research-development/visual-cultures

Recently Published Photographs, with Phil Hall, “Four Visual Poems.” Ottawater 6. Photo credits: “M, 2008”
http://www.ottawater.com