Apologies for duplicate messages.

This is a reminder that on Thursday, April 2, 2009, the Center for
Research on Vermont is sponsoring Research-in-Progress Seminar #220,
“Carceral Landscapes, Invisible Laborers: Mexican Farmhands in Vermont
Dairy Agriculture,” by Susannah McCandless of the University of Vermont
Geography Department.

The iconic Vermont landscape of red barns, white churches, and rolling
hills and fields is one we love and think we know. Yet Latino
farmworkers’ year-round presence and labor have remained invisible in
this same countryside, even as they help to maintain the rural character
and agricultural economy of the state. Since the late 1990s, Mexican
farmworkers have come to labor as racialized others in Vermont. To make
their lives and work here more visible, Susannah McCandless has engaged
in participatory research focused on workers’ experience within the
landscape, as enclosed, immobilized, and active subjects.

The free, public talk begins at 7:30 P.M., in Memorial Lounge (Room 338)
on the main floor of the Waterman Building at the University of Vermont.

A related exhibit, “The Golden Cage: Mexican Migrant Workers and Vermont
Dairy Farmers,” offers through intimate photographs and interviews a
revealing portrait of dairy farmers and Mexican workers and a glimpse
into their interdependent lives—what they hope for and who they are.

Conceived by former Vermont Migrant Education Program tutor Chris Urban
whose work teaching English brought him to farms around Addison County,
“The Golden Cage” pairs photographs of dairy farmers and Mexican workers
created by Caleb Kenna with audio and text excerpts from interviews
conducted by Chris Urban. The exhibit was produced in association with
the Vermont Folklife Center. Although the exhibit focuses specifically
on Addison County, similar stories–in all their complexity and
contradiction–could be told in dairy farming communities around Vermont
and throughout the United States.

The exhibit will be on view in the lobby of Bailey/Howe Library until
May 20, 2009.

For more information, please call the Center for Research on Vermont at
802-656-4389 or email <[log in to unmask]> or visit the Center's Web site at
<www.uvm.edu/~crvt>.

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***********************************************************
Kristin Peterson-Ishaq
Coordinator, Center for Research on Vermont
     and Vermont Studies Program
University of Vermont
589 Main Street, Nolin House
Burlington, VT 05401-3439
Email: <[log in to unmask]>; Telephone: 802-656-8363
Web site: <www.uvm.edu/~crvt>