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Olga González
Professor Olga González is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests include the relationship between memory and secrecy, visuality and representation, vernacular/popular art, the politics of truth and reconciliation, violence and subjectivity, and Latin America. Professor González has a master’s degree in Anthropology and Education from Teachers College-Columbia University (1996) and a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University (2006). For her Master’s thesis she conducted field research in a southern coastal department of Peru with people displaced by political violence. She examined the challenging social and cultural dynamics facing Peru’s war refugees as they constructed new communities and negotiated new identities. Subsequently she did extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Quechua-speaking highland community of Sarhua (Ayacucho, Peru). From that research she wrote her doctoral dissertation which examined the relationship between memory and secrecy through an analysis of oral histories and indigenous paintings depicting the events of political violence during the armed conflict between the Shining Path and the Peruvian government. That dissertation is the basis of a book manuscript titled “Unveiling Secrets of War in the Peruvian Highlands” which is currently under review. Prior to becoming an anthropologist, Professor González completed her B.A. in psychology (1987) and the Licenciatura in Clinical Psychology (1988) both from the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Lima, Peru. She then taught at the Pontificia Universidad Católica, in the Department of Psychology, and served as the executive director of the non-governmental organization CEDAPP (Center for Psychosocial Development and Assessment). At CEDAPP she worked with grass-root communities of Andean origin and children from economically poor inner city neighborhoods, and conducted seminars and supervision with psychology students completing their internships. Based on her work with Andean migrants and urban poor children, which sparked her initial interest in anthropology and ethnographic methods, Professor González published several articles in Peruvian psychoanalytical journals on topics of sexuality, aggression and violence. Since moving to New York in 1992 to pursue her graduate studies in anthropology, Professor González has worked as a psychotherapist, in particular with Hispanics and African Americans. Her interest in the cultural politics surrounding indigenous and vernacular art and the positioning of these forms of art in the wider, national and transnational arenas, led her to become the adviser and collaborator for two traveling art exhibits in the United States, “Weaving of War” (1995-1998, 2003-2004) and “Tradition and Crisis in Peruvian Popular Arts” (1996-1998). She has also published two short articles on a Peruvian artist, whose work appeared in the “Weavings of War” exhibit, titled “Experiences of a Peruvian Arpillera Artist in New York City: Weaving and Unraveling War Memories” and “Juana Huaytalla-Méndez: Peruvian Arpillerista.” During her first year at Macalester College Professor González will teach Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Power, Violence and Resistance in Latin America, and the Politics of Memory in Latin America.
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