Colloquium Series: Marcelo López-Dinardi & Emma Newman 2/17/26
"Cement in Puerto Rico: Essential to Life"
"Migrant Necro-Rutas of South Texas: State Impacts on Undocumented and Clandestine Movement at the Texas/ Mexico Border"
Marcelo López-Dinardi, Associate Professor | Architecture
Abstract:
Examining the development of the cement industry and its complex histories from the vantage point of architecture, this project seeks to uncover connections between Puerto Rico’s material culture and how the future was imagined. It argues that cement, the second most consumed good globally, only after water, was a cultural agent beyond a construction material in the Puerto Rican archipelago. Although known and studied in Puerto Rican studies at large, scarce work explores the imagined realities of cement from its forced industrialization period, from the 1940s to the present, through a cultural lens. This project critically examines this construction material’s industry, politics, adoption, and climatic realities in its combined role of casting dreams of modernization and condemning the Puerto Rican archipelago to an involuntary identity.
NOTE: Colloquium papers are by definition drafts put forward for discussion. Do not quote, duplicate, or distribute this paper electronically without the author’s permission.
Emma Newman, Ph.D. Candidate | Anthropology
Abstract:
This colloquium presentation will discuss my doctoral dissertation research and the theoretical foundations it is based upon. From 2021 to 2025 I conducted ethnographic, qualitative data collection in South Texas with an interest in clandestine migration in the region. In the face of the ongoing crisis of migrant death at the U.S./Mexico border, several driving questions emerged: What factors are contributing to migrant death in this region? What happens to migrant remains after an individual has passed away in this context? And how do recovery practices affect the everyday lives of local law enforcement agents and citizen populations? The theories and concepts of border spectacle (De Genova 2020), necroviolence (De Leon 2015), crimmigration (Stumpf 2006), and states of exception (Agamben 2005; Doty 2007) among others, anchor my research and shed light on how the U.S./Mexico borderlands have become a hyper-militarized space with often deadly outcomes for those who live there, and migrate through.
The Colloquium Series offers Glasscock Center Fellows an opportunity to discuss a work-in-progress with faculty and graduate students from different disciplines. Each colloquium begins with the presenter’s short (10-15 minute) exposition of the project, after which the floor is open for comments and queries. The format is by design informal, conversational, and interdisciplinary.
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