Diane Nelson
Template:TOCnestleft Diane Nelson is Associate Professor, Duke Department of Cultural Anthropology.
Background
Professor Nelson began fieldwork in Guatemala in 1985 exploring the impact of civil war on highland indigenous communities with a focus on the more than 100,000 people made into refugees and 200,000 people murdered in what the United Nations has called genocidal violence. Since then her research has sought to understand the causes and effects of this violence, including the destruction and reconstruction of community life In A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (University of California Press 1999).
Professor Nelson describes the relationship between the Guatemalan state and the Mayan cultural rights movement. Her new project grows from her interests in cultural studies and cyborg anthropology and explores science and technology development in Guatemala and Latin America more generally. She is focusing on laboratory and clinical research on vector and blood-borne diseases like malaria and dengue and the intersection of this knowledge production with health care in the midst of neo-liberal reforms and popular demands. In the summer of 2003 she began new fieldwork on this interest in Venezuela, while continuing her research in Guatemala.[1]
Defending the LRS
A letter to the The Stanford Daily, Volume 197, Issue 67, 30 May 1990.
- As concerned graduate students we reject the terms of the argument that have been put forth over the last week in The Stanford Daily’s coverage of the League of Revolutionary Struggle’s presence in various progressive groups on campus.
- We ask, what is wrong with being in the League? According to the democracy the right espouses at their convenience, there is nothing illegal or immoral about belonging to a leftist political party. We should judge these alleged members of the League by their political program and their activism. If we agree with the necessary progressive change they have helped to bring about on campus, then we should applaud them, not condemn them according to a rhetoric that should have been buried with McCarthy.
- As members of the left, we have known and worked with members of the League for years. Whether or not we agree with all of their agenda, it has never been hidden, and their political philosophy has a long-standing tradition in the nation’s political life. While we are concerned with the League’s tactic of secret membership, recent attacks by The Stanford Review and The Daily legitimate their caution. How can The Daily expect members of this group to disclose their identity in the face of such coercion and hostility?
- Jose Jesus Cazares
- Benjamin Robinson
- Maria Saldana
- Ming-Yeung Lu Graduate students, modern thought and literature
- Marcia Klotz Graduate student, German studies
- Diane Nelson Graduate student, anthropology
- Michael Reilly
- Marisa Sanders Graduate students, Latin American studies
- Sha Xin Wei Graduate student, mathematics
Peoples Platform graduate senators
In 1991 Diane Nelson, David Bradfute, David Schmid and Elena Duarte were Peoples Platform graduate senators.[2]