UDP Internacional

9 June 2023

After a rigorous selection process, five University students were chosen to participate in the Princeton-UDP Global Seminar, a program that will take place over six weeks at the University and whose main theme will be “Art and politics in the transition to democracy in Chile, lead by professor and writer Javier Guerrero from the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS).

In this context, the five selected students – who belong to the careers of History (1), Sociology (1) and Creative Literature (3) – attended an informative meeting that took place this Thursday, June 8 in the American Corner space .

At the meeting, the student body learned the details of the Seminar and shared expectations regarding this prestigious course, in which 14 students from Princeton University will also participate.

“We are very happy to reactivate this program that was done once before before the pandemic and therefore was paused for a while. In this meeting we want to congratulate and formalize the incorporation of these five UDP students who are going to participate throughout the program”, said Anoek van den Berg, General Director of International Relations.

“This is an action that allows University students, without leaving Chile, without even leaving the UDP, to have access to international opportunities, views and perspectives. It should be noted that the program is 100% in English. Therefore, with this we address global training, which is an axis of the University’s internationalization policy ”, she commented.

Specifically, the Princeton-UDP Global Seminar considers different activities such as visits to museums, archives and memory sites, and trips to Valparaíso and Atacama, among others, all focused on the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Coup d’état. In addition, during its development, the Chilean and international student body will delve into key works of the counterculture that took place during the dictatorship. One of them will be Lumpérica (1983), the first novel by the writer Diamela Eltit, which was written as a ruse in order to bypass the regime’s sensors.

Likewise, the student body will participate in movie viewings and will have the opportunity to talk with writers and artists such as Nona Fernández, Cecilia Vicuña, Voluspa Jarpa and Raúl Zurita. Without going any further, the Seminar includes a joint activity between the artistic collective Las Tesis and the feminist writer Rita Segato, whose texts inspired the performance Un violador en tu camino.

Alejandro Martínez, co-director of the program from Princeton, pointed out that the Princeton-UDP Global Seminar “is one of the most prestigious international programs at Princeton University.” As he explained, it is held every two years in different countries in order to enrich the training of students and generate exchange experiences throughout the world.

“This time, we are going to have a very intensive Seminar. We are going to discuss literary works, films, visual works and we will have international guests. The idea is to live the experience of an intensive Princeton seminar in six weeks (…). Princeton University also values and recognizes the importance of the UDP. This is the second time it has been done and we are very interested in the dialogue that the students are going to have”, he stressed.

The students who will participate in the meeting also thanked the instance and were surprised with the selection of activities. Ignacia Rivas, a history student, stated: “The seminar has not even started and the experience has already been wonderful (…). Academically, I am interested in memory and human rights works and I also really like that a more Latin American reading can be considered in these phenomena that can be seen throughout the 20th century”.

For his part, Nicolás Hernández, a Sociology student, stated: “This is a seminar that looks super complete. It will enrich us internationally, not only with the experiences of people who study at Princeton, but also with different disciplines. In that sense, I think it will be a very important experience for my academic development. I’m going to get a lot out of it.”

The Princeton-UDP Global Seminar will be held between June and August. At the end, the students must develop a work regarding the topics covered throughout the course. The idea is that they can explore and reflect on the art-political triad and dictatorship. This, 50 years after the coup.