Elisabeth Jay Friedman
Statement
It is my honor to be nominated as a candidate for the Executive Council slate. I have been a proud member of LASA for nearly three decades, beginning as a graduate student in 1995. I can still remember how nervous I was for my first presentation – as a last-minute substitute for a panelist who withdrew. I had practiced over and over again in my hotel room (shared with five other students, including two who slept on the floor in sleeping bags) but still my hands shook and I’m sure my voice did too. The distinguished discussant for the panel had written one of the key sources for my graduate research – what would she make of my extension of her findings? As it turned out, she was kind and supportive, and her feedback helped me to turn this paper into my first published article – in LASA’s own Latin American Research Review!
My first experience modelled in many ways what I have found to be LASA’s unique community and ethos among professional academic associations. LASA has strived to reflect the world its members are busily attempting to create in their varied contexts around the Americas and beyond. I have received my most productive critiques and developed key insights at LASA, in both formal and informal exchanges, or simply sitting in panel audiences taking in the wisdom, curiosity, and, often, passionate commitment of researchers focused on regional issues of critical relevance – in several regional languages. As a scholar whose work focuses on dedicated efforts to change society, whether at the level of deep-seated structural inequalities, their institutional expressions, or social manifestations, I have received unparalleled support from many colleagues and now friends. I am so grateful for this support, and eager to give back.
I have experienced three decades of LASA from distinct angles. I have organized panels and acted as chair and discussant. I have collaborated with colleagues to chair four program tracks. And I have served in various roles in the Gender and Feminist Studies Section. All of these experiences have widened and deepened my perspective on our shared mission “to foster intellectual discussion, research, and teaching on Latin America, the Caribbean, and its people throughout the Americas, promote the interests of its diverse membership, and encourage civic engagement through network building and public debate.”
If chosen as a member of the Executive Council, I would continue to promote LASA’s ongoing efforts to expand the subjects and issues taken on by the Association, and particularly those focused on enhancing the diversity of its membership and intellectual projects, as well as fostering cooperation among scholars and within civic and movement spaces. Having had the privilege to collaborate with established colleagues and emerging scholars from the Americas, I am committed to building spaces of truly regional and inter-generational exchange and knowledge production. As an active participant in regional and international venues, I would seek to strengthen linkages within and outside of LASA to advance collaboration on areas of mutual concern. In particular, I would attempt to integrate lessons I have learned from regional feminist movements to support places of dialogue and debate concerning social transformation, especially an intersectional politics that centers human interdependence and the planet we share with our non-human kin.
My research on the mutual transformation of technology and society has made me attentive to the ways in which LASA’s “digital footprint” can facilitate our common mission. I would hope to build on established projects such as the open-access database SciELO, which makes available Latin American, South African, and West Indian publications in multiple languages from a range of disciplines, and both CLACSO and FLACSO’s digital research distribution networks.
Thank you for considering my candidacy, and for your support of LASA!