David William Foster Memorial Lecture Featuring Ángeles Donoso Macaya

Join the ASU Library for the inaugural David William Foster Memorial Lecture, featuring feminist immigrant educator, researcher, writer and activist Ángeles Donoso Macaya.

Macaya’s presentation, “Documentary Reverberations: Towards a Feminist Critique of Photos by/of ‘women’” will attempt to critically consider the theoretical and methodological problems that emerge when engaging jointly the notions of “visuality,” “women” and “Archive." 

RSVP to seonaid.valiant@asu.edu. 

Originally from Santiago, Chile and based in New York City, Macaya’s focus is the expanding field of photography in contemporary Chile. She explores the visual archive of the women's and feminist movement against the dictatorship, an archive which continues to reverberate today in different ways. Learn about the little-known photographic records made by renowned photographer Paz Errázuriz during the 1980s and the intimate archive formulated by photographer Carla Yovane.

Macaya teaches Latin American Visual Studies in the PhD Program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures at The CUNY Graduate Center, and is also a Professor of Spanish at the Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY. Her research centers on Latin American photography theory and history, counter-archival production, human rights activism, documentary film, (trans)feminisms in the Southern Cone and public humanities scholarship. Macaya is the author of “La insubordinación de la fotografía” (Metales Pesados 2021), “The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship” (University of Florida Press 2020), which received the Best Book Award in Latin American Visual Culture (LASA 2021), Best Book Award in Recent History and Memory (LASA 2022), and an Honorable Mention Award for the Socolow-Johnson Prize (CLAH 2022).

The David William Foster Memorial Lecture series invites scholars to speak on themes of Latin American theater, film, photography, translation, and literature, to honor the memory and work of Arizona State University’s Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, David William Foster (1940-2020). Foster became an ASU Regents Professor of Spanish and Women and Gender Studies — the highest faculty honor at ASU — in 1991 and continued to teach at ASU until his passing in 2020. Foster contributed to many fields, from Brazilian studies to Jewish studies, held teaching appointments in several countries, and supported generations of students.