PMA graduate student and scholar specializing in dance and performance, Isabel Padilla Carlo has been selected to be a Latin American and Caribbean Studies Graduate Fellow for 2024-2025. These fellowships “provide an opportunity for a select number of graduate students to engage with a broad, interdisciplinary community dedicated to the study of Latin American and the Caribbean,” according to the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
Read Isabel’s comments about the fellowship and her work:
“As a Latin American and Caribbean Studies Graduate Fellow, I am tasked with actively participating in and shaping the program’s activities for the 2024-2025 academic year. This includes contributing to the seminar series, graduate symposium, and other Fellow-sponsored events, all aimed at sparking crucial conversations about Latin America and the Caribbean.
Furthermore, as a scholar specializing in dance and performance, I am excited to make unique and meaningful contributions to the program. Dance exists in a constant state of metamorphosis, with the immediate experiences of the dancing bodies shaping the movement practices in and of themselves—pushing and pulling them to fit their needs, desires, and aspirations. Following this line of thought, dance emerges as an entry point into pertinent social, cultural, and political issues. Thus, the body is not merely viewed as a passive intermediary between the mind and the external world; instead, it is recognized as an active agent that influences its surroundings and functions as a catalyst for change.
I can attest to the transformative power of moving bodies. It is through dance that Black and indigenous histories perdured for centuries and withstood violent attempts to erase their presence. Through oral, musical, and embodied storytelling, dance and performance have functioned as powerful tools for resistance and protest. The Latin American and Caribbean Studies programming will also inform my research as I explore how ideas of nation, gender, race, and class are articulated through Puerto Rican dance and performance from the 1950s onwards, particularly those that are ‘imported’ from elsewhere or fostered amidst the diaspora.
It is with these convictions in mind that I invite undergraduate and graduate students to gather, move, and activate both mind and body, to encourage them to reflect, ponder, and question the world around them. Through a diverse series of events, I aim to raise awareness of the idea that dance is not only a form of artistic expression but a medium for critical thought.”
Read more about the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program: https://einaudi.cornell.edu/learn/academics/call-latin-american-and-caribbean-studies-graduate-fellows
