September 10, 2018
Community learning with the Colombian Memories in Color Project
What can one person do to rebuild a fractured community? Through funding from an Engagement Incentive Grant, Spanish professors Lucía Garavito and Laura Kanost, will bring a new project to K-State students and the campus community through fall 2019.
Their project, "Peace and Reconciliation after Transgenerational Trauma: Constructing Community with the Memories in Color Project," will give K-State Spanish students opportunities to collaborate with a Colombian peace and reconciliation nonprofit, Memorias a Color. The project also will bring a series of events in fall 2019 to engage the K-State community in dialogue on healing communities torn apart by violence and hatred.
Preparation for the events will begin in fall 2018 and provide hands-on learning opportunities for K-State Spanish students to create meaningful translations that will have a direct impact on several international communities.
Edwin Rodríguez, founder of Memorias a Color, uses the image of home to foster dialogue and build bridges in communities that have been traumatized by generations of armed conflict. Fall 2019 workshops and an art exhibition will feature images of home created by these communities in Colombia, and inspire the K-State community to work through our own images of home together. Translations for the art exhibit and interpreting at the workshops will enrich K-State Spanish students' academic experience.
Interested students should contact Kanost at lakanost@k-state.edu.
More details on the project, including images of the Memorias a Color initiative, are available on the K-State Spanish blog.
The modern languages department is housed in the College of Arts and Sciences. Currently, more than 60 percent of students pursuing modern languages degrees participate in education abroad programs, where they use languages they are learning. To learn more about the department, please visit its website.