By Weston Loyd

(Sept. 25, 2015) — The University of Kentucky's Gaines Center for the Humanities and Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences are teaming up to present a symposium on violence and the human condition. The series' second event, focused on violence in Latin America, will run 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30, in the west end room of the 18th floor of the Patterson Office Tower. The symposium is free and open to the public.

The second event of the series, "The Intersections of Violence in Latin America," will feature various Latin American experts in their respective fields. 

Diane Kahlo, a visual artist, will open the day's program with a multimedia presentation at 9:30 a.m. on "Las Desaparecidas de Ciudad Juarez," or "The Missing Women of Juarez." Her presentation features portraits of more than 150 young girls who have gone missing or have been murdered in Juarez, Mexico. Kahlo's mission is to keep the memory of these young girls alive and to shed light on the injustices that women face in the world today.

Francisco Goldman, a novelist, journalist and professor of literature and creative writing at Trinity College, will give the second talk of the day. His lecture, "Ayotzinapa: Mexico Hits Bottom," will begin 11 a.m. 

Following lunch, there will be a panel discussion on the intersections of violence and human rights across time and space from 2-4:30 p.m. Members of the panel are:

· Rosa Linda Fregoso, professor of Latin American and Latino studies at University of California, Santa Cruz;

· Cecilia Menjivar, Foundation Distinguished Professor of Sociology at University of Kansas; and

· Tiffiny Tung, associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University.

The College of Arts and Sciences and the Gaines Center are sponsoring a year of programming around the broad theme of "Violence and the Human Condition." Over the course of the 2015-16 academic year, faculty members from many different UK departments will collaborate with each other and with visiting experts from other universities in a series of mini-conferences and workshops that will be free and open to the campus as a whole.

The partnership will explore the theme of violence across many different registers — architecture and conflict, political violence, war and gender, transnational dimensions of violence, the intersections of violence in Latin America, and the notion of war without end as a metaphor in contemporary life.

For more information on this symposium, contact Mónica Díaz, director of the Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies Program at monica.diaz@uky.edu. For more on the year of programming, contact the Gaines Center at 859-257-1537.