NewsPress Release -Marlboro Offers Two Lectures on Sociology and Politics in Latin America

MARLBORO, VT - Monday, April 9 in its Appletree Building, Marlboro College is offering two lectures on sociology and politics in Latin America. "Dominicans at the Crossroads: The Formation of a Trans-Latina Identity" with Karin Weyland will take place at 3 p.m., while "Law in a Time of Violence: Some Reflections on Colombia" with Farid Samir Benavides and Erika Marquez Montano will take place at 4:30 p.m.

Weyland studied sociology and education at Marlboro College, earning her B.A. in 1991. In 1998 she received her Ph.D. in sociology from the New School for Social Research, studying Dominican women and issues such as identity formation, border cultures, migration, gender and transnationalism. Her doctoral dissertation consisted of an ethnographic study of Washington Heights in New York City, the largest Dominican community in the United States. Weyland recently published a photo essay, "Dominicans at the Crossroads: Surviving the Translocal Global Village," in Hopscotch: A Cultural Review. She teaches sociology at Amherst College, Massachusetts.

Samir Benavides and Marquez Montano are legal scholars who have trained in Bogota, Colombia, and Barcelona, Spain. They will discuss Plan Colombia, the billion-dollar aid package granted Colombia by the U. S. for the war on illicit drugs. They will also look at the structure of the Colombian judicial system, and how it is being changed from an accusatorial system to something resembling more closely the criminal process in the United States.

Both lectures are free and open to the public, and the Appletree is fully accessible. For more information about the events or Marlboro, please call (802) 257-4333 or go to www.marlboro.edu.