About the Author
Harvard Summer School Program in San Jose de Moro, Peru
The summer of 2019 has been an amazing adventure. We learned about Incan quipus from the world expert on the subject, toured important archaeological sites and museum with their directors, took lectures from Peru’s Minister of Culture and interacted with locals whose lives have been affected by archaeological research. On the weekends small packs of students ventured into town visiting local restaurants and cultural craft stores. I even got to practice my Spanish language skills as a I ordered the best milkshake I have ever tasted.
This past summer I had the pleasure of attending the Harvard Summer School Program in San Jose de Moro, Peru. In addition to providing me with course credit towards my concentration and access to the archaeological sites I am researching for my honors thesis, this trip provided me and my peers with invaluable cultural experiences as we traveled through the highlands and along the north coast of Peru. Having the opportunity to attend this archaeological field school has been invaluable to me as a student of Anthropology and as a global citizen.
More Student Views
The Opacity of Cuba’s La Habana Vieja
On a recent trip to Havana, two fellow visitors reminded me what it feels like to encounter the Cuban city for the first time and to become enamored with its paradoxes. The first, a young Kansan woman in my Airbnb, learning that I study Cuban architecture and urbanism, expressed a familiar curiosity about the dramatic contrast between austere 19th century mansions, colonial palaces and the surrounding blocks of ruinous buildings. The second, a Berliner, shared ceviche with me on a restaurant balcony overlooking a street bustling with tourists and art vendors. He pointed out with a laugh that our utensils came from Air France first class.
It’s Time For Women
“I believe we are in an exacerbated crisis of non-guarantee of women’s rights throughout the country, with the peculiar characteristic of finding ourselves in a moment of different rhetoric — of it being the time of women — because we now have the first woman president, seventy years after women gained the right to vote in this country,” said my interviewee, an organizer for a women’s rights organization in Oaxaca.
Amazonian Research Trip
Around the halfway point of my doctoral studies, I spent a year living between Boston and Belém in the Amazon region of Brazil to experience firsthand what I had until then been researching from satellite images and other people’s accounts. Belém became my base, from which I made frequent short excursions to surrounding areas to get a feel for life in the region. After that initial experience, I planned deeper immersions that recently brought me back for two longer field trips. This is a brief narrative of one of them.
