Dr. Jim Handy's Students

Kelly Anne Butler
PhD (ABD)

Dissertation Title El Cristo Negro de Esquipulas: Pilgrimage, Community, and Authority in Guatemala

Fields of Expertise Comparative Aboriginal studies, indigenous peoples and religious hybridity in the Americas, Catholic colonialism, hegemony/counter-hegemony

Dissertation Description:
In 1594, indigenous people in the Ch’orti’ region of Central America made an agreement with Spanish colonial authorities to commission a statue of Christ, carved in dark wood, that would be placed in a chapel in an area that had served as a pilgrimage destination in the pre-contact period. My dissertation, covering the time period from the establishment of the shrine of the Black Christ to the present day, examines multiple events related to the pilgrimage and the statue itself, revealing contested notions of authority that exist among overlapping layers of communities, each of which holds a vested interest in the shrine and the space around it.

Selected Conference Presentations:
“Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation, Federal Status, and the (Re)Marginalization of the Newfoundland Mi’kmaq,” American Society for Ethnohistory (ASE), Indianapolis, Indiana, October 8-12, 2014.

Cuando las mujeres eran carne’: Religion, Gender, and Community in Esquipulas,” Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies (RMCLAS) Annual Meeting, Durango, Colorado, April 2-5, 2014.

'No será movida de su sitial’: The Archbishop’s Anti-Communist Crusade, Esquipulas, and the 1953 National Pilgrimage of the Black Christ,” Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies (RMCLAS) Annual Meeting, Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 3-6, 2013.

“Caves, Stones, Candles, and El Cristo Negro: Pilgrimage and Indigeneity in Esquipulas,” Native American/Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) Annual Meeting, Sacramento, California, May 19-21, 2011.

“Indigenous Communities and Religious Change: The Dynamism of Cofradías in Guatemala,” American Society for Ethnohistory (ASE), Ottawa, Ontario, October 14-16, 2010.

“Institutional Religion and Indigenous (Counter)Hegemony: Religious Practice, Affiliation, and Change in Guatemala,” Native American/Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) Annual Meeting, Tucson, Arizona, May 20-22, 2010.

Email kelly.butler@usask.ca

Patrick Chasse
PhD (ABD)

Dissertation Description: His dissertation explores the environmental and social consequences of the industrialization of agriculture in Guatemala, 1945-1980. His case study is the Pacific Coast of Guatemala. He is using historical GIS techniques, maps and records from the agrarian reform (1952-1954) and census data to reconstruct land use and displacement in this understudied region. He is a member of the Sustainable Farming Systems (SFS) project based at the University of Saskatchewan.

Carla Fehr
PhD (ABD)
Dissertation Title: Bio-politics and the Guatemalan State from 1955-1976

Dissertation Description:
My work seeks to understand a range of ‘bio-political,’ developmental techniques -- such as a massive anti-malaria campaign, experimental health initiatives, and rural development policies -- employed by the Guatemalan state during a period known as the counterrevolution. My research will shed insight on state presence, governance, and the relationship between knowledge and power in a post-colonial context.

Fields of Expertise:  Latin American History; History of International Development; European Intellectual History.

Publications:
Handy, Jim and Carla Fehr, “‘Drawing Forth the Force That Slumbered in Peasants’ Arms’: The Economist, High Agriculture and Selling Capitalism,” in Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurelie Desmarais and Nettie Wiebe (eds.), Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community. Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2010.

Handy, Jim and Carla Fehr. “‘The Free Exercise of Self-Love:’ The Economist on Ireland.” Studies in Political Economy (Accepted December 2013).

Email: carla.fehr@usask.ca

Dallas Posavad
MA Student

Dallas Posavad is an MA student at the University of Saskatchewan who studies Native-Newcomer relations transnationally. More substantially, by comparing three specific case studies, Dallas’ project analyzes the diverse ways in which Christianity was adopted by, or imposed on, the Aboriginal nations of the Americas by various colonizing powers. Understanding what Christianity meant to indigenous people is crucial to appreciating their dynamic worldviews and to avoid reproducing Eurocentric discourses that have dominated the subject until the late 20^th century. Christianity was a powerful moral and rhetorical institution in colonial societies; Euro-American and Aboriginal individuals harnessed it to promote and inform their agendas, whether or not these concurred with imperial ambitions.

His theoretical underpinnings include contributions from various postcolonial and literary theorists, such as Mary Louise Pratt, Rolena Adorno, Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and Walter D. Mignolo. Hybridity, mimickery, transculturation, discourse analysis and the role of literacy frame his understanding of the subject.

Dallas is a Saskatoon native who moved with his family to Quebec for work when he was 6 years old. After the 1995 referendum, Dallas’ father took a job in Tijuana and relocated the family to Chula Vista, California, where he graduated high school. In 2007, Dallas repatriated to his hometown to attend the University of Saskatchewan, where he received his BA in History. Due to his love of travel, Dallas attended a term abroad in Guadalajara to improve his Spanish, participated in the Ethnohistory Field School in British Columbia, and hopes to be accepted into a teaching internship in Ukraine in 2014 at the Centre for Canadian Studies in Chernivtsi.