Sharing our work at the IU CLACS Graduate Conference

At the end of February, just before COVID-19 interrupted global travel and caused a wave of worldwide lockdowns, The Rich Coast Project’s co-founders had a chance to reunite and present the project’s work to new audiences at Indiana University. Markus Brown, native of Punta Uva, traveled to Bloomington, Indiana, to present at a multilingual multimedia conference titled “BETWEEN ABSURDITY & POSSIBILITY: ENVISIONING LIBERATION IN AN AGE OF NONSENSE”.

Sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), the annual Graduate Conference is designed to showcase research that examines and challenges the presuppositions of the diverse social, political, cultural, economic, technological, and environmental themes present in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

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Markus delivered a presentation titled “Documenting Community-Identified Cultural Heritage through Participatory Media in South Caribbean Costa Rica.” He shared the history and context of the communities of the south Caribbean of Costa Rica, some major trends and forces that have caused local customs and history to be imperiled, and the ways in which The Rich Coast Project has been working to address these needs through our participatory media, oral history, and research efforts.

Naphtalia Ruth, Katie Beck, Martha Manges, Markus Brown

Naphtalia Ruth, Katie Beck, Martha Manges, Markus Brown

In addition to Markus’s presentation, which included a panel with two scholars working on collective memory projects in Latin America, we were able to present many of our projects through a multimedia gallery space that allowed conference participants to interact with photographs and other artifacts while discussing the project with Markus and Katie. As a special bonus to the event, two of our past volunteers (Martha Manges, Naphtalia Ruth) from the 2018 Alternative Break trip with The Media School came by to see us!

Conference participants viewed photographic collections from the South Caribe Roots Archive and other artifacts collected by The Rich Coast Project.

Conference participants viewed photographic collections from the South Caribe Roots Archive and other artifacts collected by The Rich Coast Project.

Project UpdatesThe Rich Coast ProjectIndiana University Conference, Presentation, Indiana University