The funds requested are to cover a portion of the expenses of the planned events with writer Margaret Randall. We wish to invite her for a series of activities centered on her poetry, her collections of testimonios of Latin American women, and her work in the 1960s in Mexico City as editor of the literary journal El corno emplumado / The Plumed Horn. We believe that an encounter with Margaret Randall will be of interest to many members of the Graduate Center community, especially to students and faculty in the English and Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Ph.D. Programs. The idea of inviting Margaret Randall arose among a group of students in the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages, who brought the idea to the Center for the Humanities for their consideration. Aoibheann Sweeney, the current director of the Center, agreed to pay the honoraria for Randall and a second speaker to take part in the events. This grant is in support of the “Lost and Found Project”, an initiative started by Prof. Ammiel Alcalay of the English program and the Poetics Group to publish a series of chapbooks documenting New American Poetry. We believed this would be an excellent opportunity to bring together students and faculty from different programs who are interested in Randall's activities as writer, editor and political activist. Her editions of oral histories collected during the years she lived in Latin America had a significant part in establishing the field of subaltern studies, and have promoted discussions among anthropologists on ways to approach local communities. Also, Randall's feminist activism from the early sixties has made her a significant figure in the fight for women rights in the United States. Faculty and students from several programs (History, Women Studies, Comparative Literature and Anthropology, besides Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian and English programs) have already expressed interest in this visit. We are seeking support from the DSC to cover her travel expenses from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and to cover one hotel night so that students can have an open dialogue with her (the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian has already agreed to cover two nights out of four she will be staying in New York City). Our idea is to have a meeting open for all students at the Graduate Center to talk about memory and oral history, areas in which Margaret Randall has been deeply involved for over forty years, both in Latin America and more recently in the United States. She described her presentation as “a personal journey about how I got into doing oral history, the place of memory in my process, and also linking my poetic process with the oral history work”. We asked her to talk about her experiences collecting women voices in Latin America, and to reflect on the political meaning of her work as well as on the relationship between testimonio and poetry creation. We expect this to be a significant contribution to a series of debates we have been conducting on memory and testimonial literature both at the Literary Theory Studies Group and the Colombian Studies Group, by someone who had a significant role in shaping the testimonial genre. This activity will take place on Tuesday, March 23rd 2010 at 6:30 p.m. in room 4116. We are seeking support from the DSC to cover her travel expenses from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and to cover one hotel night so that students can have an open dialogue with her (the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian has already agreed to cover two nights out of four she will be staying in New York City). Our idea is to have a meeting open for all students at the Graduate Center to talk about memory and oral history, areas in which Margaret Randall has been deeply involved for over forty years, both in Latin America and more recently in the United States. She described her presentation as “a personal journey about how I got into doing oral history, the place of memory in my process, and also linking my poetic process with the oral history work”. We asked her to talk about her experiences collecting women voices in Latin America, and to reflect on the political meaning of her work as well as on the relationship between testimonio and poetry creation. We expect this to be a significant contribution to a series of debates we have been conducting on memory and testimonial literature both at the Literary Theory Studies Group and the Colombian Studies Group, by someone who had a significant role in shaping the testimonial genre. This activity will take place on Tuesday, March 23rd 2010 at 6:30 p.m. in room 4116. We are seeking support from the DSC to cover her travel expenses from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and to cover one hotel night so that students can have an open dialogue with her (the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian has already agreed to cover two nights out of four she will be staying in New York City). Our idea is to have a meeting open for all students at the Graduate Center to talk about memory and oral history, areas in which Margaret Randall has been deeply involved for over forty years, both in Latin America and more recently in the United States. She described her presentation as “a personal journey about how I got into doing oral history, the place of memory in my process, and also linking my poetic process with the oral history work”. We asked her to talk about her experiences collecting women voices in Latin America, and to reflect on the political meaning of her work as well as on the relationship between testimonio and poetry creation. We expect this to be a significant contribution to a series of debates we have been conducting on memory and testimonial literature both at the Literary Theory Studies Group and the Colombian Studies Group, by someone who had a significant role in shaping the testimonial genre. This activity will take place on Tuesday, March 23rd 2010 at 6:30 p.m. in room 4116. We are seeking support from the DSC to cover her travel expenses from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and to cover one hotel night so that students can have an open dialogue with her (the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian has already agreed to cover two nights out of four she will be staying in New York City). Our idea is to have a meeting open for all students at the Graduate Center to talk about memory and oral history, areas in which Margaret Randall has been deeply involved for over forty years, both in Latin America and more recently in the United States. She described her presentation as “a personal journey about how I got into doing oral history, the place of memory in my process, and also linking my poetic process with the oral history work”. We asked her to talk about her experiences collecting women voices in Latin America, and to reflect on the political meaning of her work as well as on the relationship between testimonio and poetry creation. We expect this to be a significant contribution to a series of debates we have been conducting on memory and testimonial literature both at the Literary Theory Studies Group and the Colombian Studies Group, by someone who had a significant role in shaping the testimonial genre. This activity will take place on Tuesday, March 23rd 2010 at 6:30 p.m. in room 4116. We are aware that the amount we request is slightly above the amount limit allocated for the Cultural Affairs Grant. As you can see, we have made our best in seeking additional sources of support. Travel and half of the accommodation expenses are all that remains to be covered. We hope the DSC will consider the situation and approve the sum requested in order to help us make a successful activity. You will find a detailed description of the expenses attached. About Margaret Randall Margaret Randall was born in New York in 1936. While living in Mexico City during the 1960s, she and Sergio Mondragón created and edited the highly influential journal El corno emplumado / The Plumed Horn, a forum for innovative writing from all parts of the Americas. Major poets from the United States, Canada and Latin America published in this journal, which featured works in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Allen Ginsberg, Williams Carlos Williams, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bukowski, Robert Kelly, Diane Wakowski, and Jerome Rothenberg were among the U.S. poets whose work appeared in its pages, and Mario Benedetti, Octavio Paz, Ernesto Cardenal, Raquel Jodorowsky, and Haroldo De Campos were some of the Latin American authors. The journal was forced to close in 1969 after the editors protested the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City in 1968. Randall has also published several influential books collecting oral histories of Latin American women who provided testimony about their lives during periods of conflict. She was an early and important voice in the Latin American testimonio tradition, and works such as Cuban Women Now (1974), Sandino's Daughters (1981), and Sandino's Daughters Revisited (1994) have contributed to the ongoing discussion concerning women's rights and the place of memory within Latin American studies. In the 1980s Randall was also the subject of a controversial INS order to deport her from the United States under the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act because of the ideological content of her writings. After several years of legal battle, the order was successfully overturned. More information about her is available online, at http://www.margaretrandall.org