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Combining personal and family recollections with incisive accounts of academic, political, and institutional experiences, The Art of Memory offers a remarkable account of the life of one of the foremost Latin American ethnographers and a leading expert in Indigenous cultures, peoples, and cosmologies. Varese narrates the story of his journey from Italy to Peru, his formative years as an Anthropologist and the critical work he did with Amazonian communities in the 1970s, his transformation into an activist scholar, his move to Mexico and his long-standing commitment with the peoples of Oaxaca, and his life as an academic in the United States. The reader will appreciate the honesty and transparency with which Varese brings out all these experiences. This extraordinary book combines the personal, the political, and the transnational to produce a vivid account of a unique and fulfilling journey.
About the author
Stefano Varese is Professor Emeritus and Founding Director and continuing member of the Indigenous Research Center of the Americas at the University of California Davis. He is the author of the classic study,
La sal de los cerros (1968), as well as
Forest Indians in the Present Political Situation of Peru (1972),
Witness to Sovereignty: Essays on the Indian Movement in Latin America (2007), and editor of
Contemporary Voices of Anima Mundi: A Reappraisal (2020), among other publications. He has received awards from the Latin American Studies Association and Casa de las Américas.
Summary
Combining personal and family recollections with incisive accounts of academic, political, and institutional experiences, The Art of Memory offers a remarkable account of the life of one of the foremost Latin American ethnographers and a leading expert in Indigenous cultures, peoples, and cosmologies.
