About the Author
Constance Bourguignon is a senior in Eliot House pursuing a joint concentration in Romance Languages and Literatures and Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality along with a secondary field in Educational Studies. She is originally from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Read her student view here.
Photo Essay from Guatemala
I wished to make the most of the countless opportunities Harvard offers to explore other countries and experience various education systems around the world. After having visited Namibia, China and France, I made my way to Guatemala last summer to teach dance and arts at Project Somos, a non-profit elementary school serving underprivileged children in the Mayan village of Chibaraval.
On a weekend trip, I visited the Cerro Tzankujil Nature Reserve and snapped this shot of a man fishing under the silhouette of two volcanoes. The picture was awarded the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Prize as well as the “Elevated Risk, Elevated Reward” Prize from Harvard Global Support Services at the annual OIE Photo Contest in February.
More Student Views
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.
What Your Naked Bodies Told Me
Twelve actors were seated on a game board, staring intently at us. I entered and took a seat in a chair in the corner. Spectators were scattered across the board, clustered in small groups of five or six around each actor. In front of me on the floor sat actor Daniel Tonsig, who looked deep into our eyes for long, silent seconds.
