Author Archives: uwpress.wisc.edu

Evaluating Teacher Performance

Journal of Human Resources cover image

Journal of Human Resources contributor Matthew A. Kraft believes that we do teachers and students a disservice when we assess teachers based mainly on students’ standardized test scores. His article “Teacher Effects on Complex Cognitive Skills and Social-Emotional Competencies,” which will be published in the Winter 2019 issue of JHR, examined teachers’ influence on students’ social-emotional abilities. These include such qualities as growth mindset, perseverance, and effort in class, w hich have been linked to employment and health outcomes in later life. Kraft also studied student performance on complex open-ended tasks in math and reading—problems more complicated than those required by multiple choice tests—to understand how teachers affect critical thinking skills. Kraft found that a teacher’s ability to impact students’ standardized test scores was not always a good indicator of that teacher’s effectiveness at fostering complex cognitive skills and social-emotional skills, suggesting that we need better methods of evaluating teacher performance.

Kraft, who is an Associate Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University, joined us for a conversation touching on his background as an educator, his ideas on effective teaching techniques, and other topics. To learn more, read about the article on the JHR blog.

How did your time as a public school teacher influence your drive to research topics in education and/or the direction of that research?

As a public school teacher in Oakland and Berkeley, California, I often felt that teaching social-emotional skills had to come before teaching academic content. I tried to help my ninth grade students, most of whom were identified as at risk of dropping out, to feel like they belonged in school, to control their behavioral impulses, and to see value in what they were learning. My students did not take standardized tests, but if they did I doubt their performance would have captured the multiple ways in which I attempted to help them develop as young adults.

Do you remember any particular teachers that helped you develop social-emotional skills as a student?

I don’t ever remember being explicitly taught social-emotional skills. Instead, I remember teachers like Ms. Thomas, my tenth and twelfth grade English teacher, who set extremely high expectations but provided constant support to help us meet these expectations. She helped me to develop my own self-efficacy and perseverance by the way she taught core academic content.

Do you have a sense of what techniques teachers could use to develop students’ complex cognitive skills? Social-emotional skills? Maybe give an example or two.

In my opinion, project-based learning holds great promise for developing complex cognitive skills. Examples such as the curriculum developed by EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning) illustrate how authentic and complex tasks require students to use a multitude of skills rather than practicing individual skills in abstract isolation on worksheets.

How to teach social-emotional skills is very much an open question. I’m convinced that the best teachers both explicitly narrate and reinforce the value of these skills, while also designing their curriculum and pedagogical approaches to support their development through academic work. I think we learn things like persistence not by being told about the value of this skill, but by experiencing small successes in overcoming challenges with the support of educators.

What is one takeaway from your article that you’d like to communicate to nonscholars or policy makers?

Our understanding of teacher effectiveness, as well as the multiple measures used in new teacher evaluation systems, fail to capture the full range of ways in which teachers affect students’ success in school and life.

After this publication, where did your research go? Did you find yourself pursuing similar questions or changing course?

My current work in this area is focused on the importance of students’ sense of belonging in schools. Preliminary results suggest that schools and teachers who help support students to feel like they belong are creating environments where students develop their academic and social-emotional skills at faster rates.

Matthew Kraft is an Associate Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University. His research and teaching interests include the economics of education, education policy analysis, and applied quantitative methods for causal inference. His primary work focuses on efforts to improve educator and organizational effectiveness in K–12 urban public schools. He has published on topics including teacher coaching, teacher professional growth, teacher evaluation, teacher-parent communication, teacher layoffs, social and emotional skills, school working conditions, and extended learning time. His research has been featured in The Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Education Week, The 74 Million, public radio, and several blog sites.

The Decline—and Rise?—of LGBTQ+ Bookstores

Michael Lowenthal’s acclaimed novel, The Paternity Test, is now available in paperback. Lowenthal is our guest blogger today, the publication date of the paperback edition.

I came of age as a gay writer when LGBTQ+ bookstores were at their peak, with close to 100 in operation across the United States. Now only six such stores remain.

Publishing a novel with a gay protagonist feels entirely different in 2018 than it did when I published my first book, The Same Embrace, twenty years ago. On one hand, so-called mainstream culture has grown much more welcoming to a diversity of LGBTQ+ artists and stories; on the other hand, a once-thriving infrastructure that specifically supported LGBTQ+ literature has been largely erased.

I came of age as a writer—as a gay writer—in an era when the OutWrite conference for LGBTQ+ writers attracted 1,500 participants annually; when most cities in America supported a weekly LGBTQ+ newspaper that published robust coverage of gay arts; when “the Gay Book Boom” was a hotly discussed topic; and when LGBTQ+ bookstores were at their peak, with close to 100 in operation across the United States. Now only six such stores remain.

For her recent master’s thesis “LGBTQ Bookstores: Past, Present, and Future,” Emerson College student Stephanie Nisbet interviewed me about my experiences. On the occasion of the paperback publication of The Paternity Test, I’d like to share some of our discussion:

Stephanie Nisbet: What was the first LGBTQ+ bookstore you visited, and what do you remember about the experience?

Michael Lowenthal: Glad Day, in Boston, which at that time was located on the second floor of a building just across from the main branch of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. To get to the store you walked up a narrow stairway, and on the way up I had to squeeze past a man who was on his way down, and that moment of contact set the tone for the whole experience: thrilling, terrifying, full of sexual frisson but also a sort of bookish bonding.

At the time, I was a college student in a small town in New Hampshire, probably 19 years old, recently out of the closet, and I had never been to a gay bar or community center or pride parade. The only public gay gatherings I had been to were my college gay-student group meetings. So I was fantastically nervous (had anyone seen me walk into the building? I felt like I was glowing in neon) and at the same time giddy with excitement.

Once I was in the store, I could barely look anyone in the eye; I mostly kept my gaze glued to the books. But when I did look up, I saw that everyone else was glancing around in a way that seemed both furtive and, shall we say, quite friendly. The store was really small, with not much space between shelves, so there was a lot of nudging past people and close breathing. The back of the store had more porny stuff, magazines and videos, and I was too scared to go back there. Two queeny young bookstore employees were joking at the register, talking too loudly, almost as if they were making fun of the hush-hush atmosphere, and I wanted to get to know them. Or to be them. I think I bought an Edmund White book, The Beautiful Room Is Empty.

When I left I was exhausted from the tension. I couldn’t wait to go back!

SN: Is there any one LGBTQ+ bookstore you feel particularly connected to?

ML: Definitely Glad Day, since Boston was the city I visited most often when I lived in rural New England, and since I moved here in 1994 and have lived here ever since. In fact, when I was moving to Boston, the first place I went was to Glad Day, to look at the big bulletin board in the hallway outside the store, which was where gay guys tacked up “seeking roommate” notices. Answering those ads was the only way I even considered finding a living situation. (Remember, this was before Craigslist, before apps.) So that’s how I found my first place in the city.

When I became a writer, Glad Day was the first bookstore where I ever gave a reading. I became friends with John Mitzel, the longtime manager (who later opened his own gay bookstore, Calamus Books), who was a witty, brilliant (if troubled) old-school raconteur. Because I was a book reviewer, I got sent lots of books by publishers, and I would often bring stacks of them into the store to sell. Wanting to support a young writer, John would pay me way more than they were worth, in cash, and then take me next door to his regular bar, where he would drink me under the table (while discussing politics, literature, and sex, not necessarily in that order), even though he had two martinis for every one that I drank. So, Mitzel, and Glad Day, gave me a big chunk of my gay education.

Image Credit: AP

While I felt particularly connected with Glad Day, I will note that I have also been to gay bookstores in New York, DC, Baltimore, Rehoboth Beach, Norfolk, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Arizona, Toronto, Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Taipei . . . and probably many more that I’m forgetting. In many of these stores, I gave readings. But in others I was just a visitor. It used to be that when I was traveling to a new city, the first obvious stop would be the gay bookstore, to meet locals who could tell me all the right places to go and things to do. The bookstore was a community center, travel agency, pickup spot, and so many other things, all rolled into one.

SN: As of 2016, Boston no longer has an LGBTQ+ bookstore. Do you believe there is still a place for another Calamus, for example, in the city?

ML: I do think there’s room for an LGBTQ store in Boston, but the concept would need to be adjusted and updated, I imagine. I think LGBTQ people are hungering for community right now, because there are so few places/occasions for us to gather. Most of the bars have closed, and with some of the key civil rights battles won (for now), there are very few public marches or demonstrations, aside from our once-a-year pride parade, which is now mostly reserved for banks, politicians, and churches. Most people don’t read a weekly LGBTQ newspaper, the way we used to. So there’s an empty spot where we used to share a common ground. Folks feel isolated, or connected only to their own small circle of friends. If there’s an upside to the Trump era, I think it’s that it’s reminded people of the power, solace, and joy of gathering together with likeminded strangers and neighbors in relatively public places. I think people are looking for spaces and ways to harness the kind of spirit that we see at the Women’s Marches and trans-rights marches and anti-Muslim-ban marches and anti-gun-violence marches and Black Lives Matter demonstrations. I think a new LGBTQ bookstore that not only sold books but also offered, say, a coffee shop and an evening events venue for story slams, would attract a lot of people and energy.

Michael Lowenthal is the author of three previous novels: Charity Girl, Avoidance, and The Same Embrace. He is a core faculty member in Lesley University’s MFA program in creative writing and lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Land Economics Journal Welcomes New Editor

Daniel J. Phaneuf

When Daniel W. Bromley assumed the editorship of Land Economics in 1974, the journal had just celebrated fifty years of continuous publication. Bromley is the Anderson-Bascom Professor (Emeritus) of Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and recipient of the 2011 Reimar Lüst Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Under Bromley’s leadership, the journal has flourished as a forum for scholarship on the economic aspects of natural and environmental resources. Now, forty-four years later, as Land Economics approaches its centennial, Bromley will pass the baton to Daniel J. Phaneuf.

Phaneuf is the Henry C. Taylor Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He boasts an impressive editorial resume, having served as the inaugural editor in chief of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (JAERE) and the managing editor of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He is the president-elect of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.

In his first “From the Editor” feature, which will appear in Land Economics volume 94 number 3 this July, Phaneuf expresses the ambition “to maintain the journal’s emphasis on empirical and policy-relevant research in the field, while continuing to expand its readership and author community to include broader swaths of researchers in the profession.” He continues, “My early emphasis will be on increasing the journal’s visibility, circulation, and overall impact—tasks for which I will call on current authors, readers, and reviewers for assistance and suggestions.” Phaneuf notes that he does not anticipate making any changes in the journal’s scholarly focus or the way it is managed.

Land Economics was established in 1925 by Richard T. Ely, founder of the American Economic Association, at the University of Wisconsin. (For more on Ely’s legacy, including the story of how he was tried as a socialist and anarchist in 1894, leading the UW Board of Regents to issue a groundbreaking defense of academic freedom, see this article.) Today, the articles in Land Economics contribute crucial knowledge to discussions of scholarly and public policy topics. The journal publishes research related to environmental quality, natural resources, housing, urban and rural land use, transportation, and other areas in both developed and developing country contexts.

Popular Wisconsin author Jerry Apps envisions a dangerous future in his new novel

A new novel from Jerry Apps is published this week: COLD AS THUNDER.

Since the Eagle Party took power in the United States, all schools and public utilities have been privatized, churches and libraries closed, and independent news media shut down. Drones buzz overhead in constant surveillance of the populace, and the open internet has been replaced by the network of the New Society Corporation. Environmental degradation and unchecked climate change have brought raging wildfires to the Western states and disastrous flooding to Eastern coastal regions.

In the Midwest, a massive storm sends Lake Michigan surging over the Door County peninsula, and thousands of refugees flee inland. In the midst of this apocalypse, the Oldsters, a resourceful band of Wisconsin sixty-somethings, lay secret plans to fight the ruling regime’s propaganda and remind people how to think for themselves.

Q. Cold as Thunder is an intriguing title. How did you come up with it?
A. When I was a kid growing up on a farm in central Wisconsin, when times got tough, prices were down, the rains didn’t come, or a cow had been sick, my dad would say, “These times are cold as thunder.” I’ve never forgotten that, and the picture I paint in this book, especially in the early chapters, would clearly fit my father’s comment that these were times “cold as thunder.”

Q. Dystopian fiction is a new direction for you. What are some of the themes in the book?
A major theme is what consequences could be expected if climate change is ignored, and little or nothing is done to slow it down and plan for it. Another theme: what would a society look like if all agencies, services, and institutions such as education, roads, and healthcare for seniors were privatized, all forms of communication were governmentally controlled, and surveillance of all human activity was widespread? The book is set in a fictional future sixteen years after the Eagle Party gains the presidency of the country and majorities in both houses of Congress.

Q. Who are some of the characters you’ve created in this book?
A. There is a former university professor who was forced from her job. She now heads up a group of seniors called “the Oldsters” who secretly work to educate others. There is a teenager deciding whether to go to Canada to train as an undercover agent. A former CIA agent, now a “fixer” for the National Office of Social Responsibility, shows up to infiltrate the local Oldsters group. And there is Bill the Bartender, who works at the Last Chapter Saloon. It was a library before all libraries were closed.

Jerry Apps

Jerry Apps is the award-winning author of more than thirty-five books on rural history and country life, including his series of Ames County novels. He is profiled in two documentaries aired nationally on public television and is a professor emeritus of education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

He will speak this evening at a launch event at the Middleton Public Library.

University of Wisconsin Press Welcomes New Sales & Marketing Manager

Casey LaVela. Photo by Victor Nirapienranant.

The University of Wisconsin Press is pleased to announce the imminent arrival of its newest staff member: Casey LaVela will be joining the organization as interim sales and marketing manager effective June 4, 2018.

LaVela, most recently publicity director at the University of Washington Press, will oversee marketing and sales strategies for the University of Wisconsin Press books division. She previously held various publicity roles at Princeton University Press and earned her degree in English and American literature, with a minor in architectural studies, at Washington University in St. Louis.

While at the University of Washington Press, she oversaw growth in regional and national exposure for the books program and brand in publications ranging from Seattle Magazine to The New Yorker, TIME, The New York Times Book Review, and The Washington Post. “Casey is the best publicist I’ve ever worked with,” says Rachael Levay, former marketing and sales director at Washington and current acquisitions editor at Utah State University Press.

LaVela succeeds Andrea Christofferson, who is retiring from UWP on June 1, 2018. Christofferson spent 16 years in her position, following more than 18 years working in museum store and museum operations at the Wisconsin Historical Society. “Andrea’s institutional knowledge and connections across the state are unrivaled,” says Dennis Lloyd, director of the University of Wisconsin Press. “We are incredibly fortunate to have found another network builder in Casey,” he says. “Her abilities and accomplishments speak for themselves, and I am very much looking forward to her joining us, and to working alongside her.”

Adds Ryan Pingel, business and operations manager at Wisconsin, “From the moment Casey visited our offices, we could tell she was a singular talent. It will be exciting to see how she implements her vision for our marketing and sales efforts, and as she works to extend our visibility in new directions.”

Says LaVela, “As a native Midwesterner I am thrilled by the opportunity to serve the University of Wisconsin Press’s regional, academic, and trade communities and build new ways forward in marketing with UWP’s wonderful team. The exciting shifts happening in scholarly publishing present an extraordinary chance to amplify UWP’s reach and role in connecting people and information in the Upper Midwest and the world at large, and I’m excited to collaborate with the new marketing specialist in our journals division, Claire Eder.”

One of LaVela’s first tasks will be to hire a new publicity manager, to replace outgoing communications director Sheila Leary, who is also retiring this spring. Leary has served the press in a number of capacities, including press director, since 1990. Says Lloyd, “Sheila’s dedication to and leadership at the University of Wisconsin Press have been invaluable. She has been a stalwart advocate for the values of university presses in general, and Wisconsin in particular, over the past three decades. We wouldn’t be where we are today without her significant efforts.”

LaVela can be reached at casey.lavela@wisc.edu.

About the University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press, one of the research and service centers housed within the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With nearly 1,500 titles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world.

Claire Eder joins UWP as Journals Marketing Specialist

Claire Eder

The University of Wisconsin Press has hired Claire Eder as its new Marketing Specialist in the Journals Division. Eder joins UWP from the literary journal Quarter After Eight, where she was editor in chief. She also has experience in scholarly publishing from a past graduate internship at the University Press of Florida.

Eder earned a PhD from Ohio University and an MFA from the University of Florida. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Cincinnati Review, PANK, Midwestern Gothic, and Guernica, among other publications.

Journals Manager Toni Gunnison notes, “Claire’s varied experience will be a great asset to UWP. We feel very fortunate to have her join our program.”

Eder states, “I’m excited to help the crucial research published in UWP journals reach a wider readership, as well as to join a friendly and skilled team. The University of Wisconsin Press is the perfect place to grow my knowledge of scholarly publishing.”

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press, a research center housed within the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is a nonprofit publisher of books, journals, and other works. The Press’s mission is to embody and extend the research, education, and outreach mission of the University of Wisconsin through publishing:

scholarship, research, and educational materials of exceptional quality and distinction valued by a worldwide academic and professional community
works that serve the people of Wisconsin and document our region’s heritage
works that sustain a literate culture and foster an informed and engaged citizenry.

UW Press book inspires national framework for teaching about slavery

A framework for teaching middle school and high school students about slavery, developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center and launched Feb. 1, was inspired by and based on a book published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2016.

A new report from the SPLC found a broad failure of textbooks, state standards and pedagogy to adequately address the role slavery played in the development of the United States — or how its legacies still influence us today.

The framework, called Teaching Hard History: American Slavery, was developed by the SPLC and its Teaching Tolerance project based on UW Press’s Understanding and Teaching American Slavery, edited by Bethany Jay and Cynthia Lynn Lyerly. The book is aimed primarily at history teachers at the college and advanced secondary levels, but it lays out 10 key concepts essential to teaching the topic at any level. The 10 concepts became the basis for the entire Teaching Hard History curriculum.

UW Press published the book as part of its Harvey Goldberg Series for Understanding and Teaching History, which aims to provide a deeper understanding of complex areas of history and tools to teach about them creatively and effectively. The series is named for Harvey Goldberg, a professor renowned for his history teaching at Oberlin College, Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin from the 1960s to the 1980s. Goldberg is remembered for his commitment to helping students think critically about the past with the goal of creating a better future.

Other books published in the series to date focus on the Vietnam War; U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History; the Cold War; and the Age of Revolutions. Future topics will include volumes on teaching about the Holocaust, the civil rights movement, the modern Middle East, and Native American history.

UW Press is administratively located within UW–Madison’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education.

Love, Love, Love

Here is just a sampling of writings on love in all its manifestations: romantic love, familial love, spiritual love, sexual love, and more. Click on the cover images to learn more about each book below. For more writings on love, type “love” into the search box on our home page.

GIVEN UP FOR YOU
A Memoir of Love, Belonging, and Belief
Erin O. White

At twenty-four, she fell in love—with Jesus, and with another woman

IMMORTALITY
Alan Feldman

Winner of the Four Lakes Prize in Poetry and the Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry

Feldman manifests the kind of love we rarely see in contemporary poetry, and this familial love pours into the world around him.

WHAT DROWNS THE FLOWERS IN YOUR MOUTH
A Memoir of Brotherhood
Rigoberto González

A bittersweet chronicle of the bond between Latino brothers

SOR JUANA’S LOVE POEMS
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Translated by Joan Larkin and Jaime Manrique

Written by the visionary and passionate genius of Mexican letters, the seventeenth-century nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

THE OFFENSE OF LOVE
Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, and Tristia 2
Ovid
A verse translation by Julia Dyson Hejduk, with introduction and notes

Finalist, National Translation Award for Poetry, American Literary Translators Association
A Choice Outstanding Academic Book

THE SONG OF SONGS AND THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN LOVE SONGS
Michael V. Fox

Two enduring bodies of love poetry from the ancient Near East.

INTIMATE CREATIVITY
Partners in Love and Art
Irving and Suzanne Sarnoff

Artist-couples combine their talents to form a collective identity as a professional team.

New Books & New Paperbacks, January 2018

We’re pleased to announce the following books to be published this month.

January 9, 2018
Defending the Masses: A Progressive Lawyer’s Battles for Free Speech
Eric B. Easton

“An early twentieth-century champion of the cause of free speech for the American people, Gilbert Roe has found an ideal interpreter in Eric B. Easton, whose own legal background serves him well in analyzing Roe’s brilliantly argued wartime freedom of speech cases.”—Richard Drake,author of The Education of an Anti-Imperialist

“Gilbert Roe was a remarkable person who associated with and defended the rights of many of the most fascinating people of the Progressive Era. Easton brings all these stories to life in his wonderfully accessible biography.”—Mark Graber,author of Transforming Free Speech

January 9, 2018
In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand
Tyrell Haberkorn

New Perspectives in Southeast Asian Studies

“Powerfully uncovers and documents many episodes of state intimidation and violence in postwar Thailand. Haberkorn deftly probes the nature and domestic actions of the Thai state and holds it accountable for its own history.”—Ben Kiernan, author of The Pol Pot Regime and Viet Nam

“This stunning new book goes far beyond Thailand’s heartrending experience of serial dictatorship without accountability and state formation grounded on impunity for crime. Haberkorn also compellingly engages Thailand’s place in the rise of human rights movements. Her documentation of an ‘injustice cascade’ reorients the study of global history and politics.”—Samuel Moyn, author of Human Rights and the Uses of History

“Required reading for anyone who wants to understand modern Thailand. Haberkorn reveals a state where political violence is normalized as it has established and maintained a narrow royalist and elitist regime.”—Kevin Hewison, editor of Political Change in Thailand

January 9, 2018
Now in paperback
Winner of the Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies
Primed for Violence: Murder, Antisemitism, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Poland
Paul Brykczynski

“An outstanding and welcome contribution to scholarship on Polish nationalism, the history of antisemitism, political violence, fascism, and democratic politics [that] will resonate with the public at large as we grapple with contemporary challenges to democracy across the globe.”—Slavic Review

“This assiduously researched, impeccably argued, and well-illustrated book should be required reading for anyone interested in modern Polish history and/or the evolution of the Polish nation more broadly.”—Polish Review

January 16, 2018
Tragic Rites: Narrative and Ritual in Sophoclean Drama
Adriana E. Brook

Wisconsin Studies in Classics

Presenting an innovative new reading of Sophocles’ plays, Tragic Rites analyzes the poetic and narrative function of ritual in the seven extant plays of Sophocles. Adriana Brook closely examines four of them—Ajax, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus—in the context of her wide-ranging consideration of the entire Sophoclean corpus.

“Brook throws new light on the representation of rituals in Sophoclean tragedy, especially of incomplete, incorrectly performed, or corrupted rituals that shape audiences’ and readers’ emotional, ethical, and intellectual responses to each play’s dramatic action and characterization, concern with identity and community, and ambiguous narrative and moral closure.”—Seth L. Schein, author of Sophocles’ Philoctetes

January 23, 2018
Conflicted Memory: Military Cultural Interventions and the Human Rights Era in Peru
Cynthia E. Milton

Critical Human Rights Series

“Brings to light how military ‘entrepreneurs of memory’ strategically place memory products in a memory marketplace. A major intervention in debates about Peru’s internal armed conflict of the 1980s and ’90s and its aftermath, which will interest scholars in many disciplines and regions.”—Paulo Drinot, coeditor of Peculiar Revolution

“This incisive analysis of Peruvian countermemories explores the military’s seemingly failed cultural memory production, its lack of artistry and inability to suppress evidence. Though the military is unable to fully reclaim heroic and self-sacrificing patriotism, Milton nonetheless recognizes its success in shaping memory politics and current political debates.”—Leigh Payne, author of Unsettling Accounts

“Impressively documents the military’s diverse interventions in Peru’s culture—memoirs, ‘truth’ reports, films, novels, and memorials—and its numerous attempts to censor cultural productions that challenge its preferred narrative.”—Jo-Marie Burt, author of Political Violence and the Authoritarian State in Peru

Memory, urgency, and shades of gray in Chile’s presidential election

Our guest blogger today is Leith Passmore, whose new book, THE WARS INSIDE CHILE’S BARRACKS: Remembering Military Service under Pinochet, is published this week in our series Critical Human Rights. From 1973 to 1990 in Chile, approximately 370,000 young men—mostly from impoverished backgrounds—were conscripted to serve as soldiers in Augusto Pinochet’s violent regime. Some were brutal enforcers, but many also endured physical and psychological abuse, survival and torture training, arbitrary punishments, political persecution, and forced labor. In his book, Passmore examines the emergence, in the early twenty-first century, of a movement of ex-conscripts seeking reparations. In his blog post for us, he comments on the continuing effects of the Pinochet regime on today’s Chile.

During the brutal military regime in Chile under Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), two young protesters—Rodrigo Rojas de Negri and Carmen Gloria Quintana—were set on fire by Chilean military personnel and left for dead. This infamous 1986 incident, known as the caso quemados (case of the burned ones) helped consolidate the growing opposition to Pinochet on Chilean streets. It also proved to be the last straw for the Reagan administration, which withdrew American support for the dictator as a result.

Fast forward to September 2017, as candidate Loreto Letelier ran for congress in Chile. She suggested on her Facebook page that Rojas de Negri and Quintana had in fact set themselves alight. Her comments came just days after thirteen retired soldiers were indicted for the murder of Rojas de Negri and the attempted murder of Quintana. The version of events peddled by Letelier is not new, but its reemergence reflects a particular and urgent moment in Chile’s memory struggle as a generational horizon looms.

The context of Letelier’s comments is the current presidential election. Conservative former president Sebastián Piñera was favored to win before the recent vote on November 19^th, 2017. However, third-place, left-wing candidate Beatriz Sánchez performed better than expected, creating uncertainty in the upcoming runoff election between Piñera and the second-place finisher, the socialist candidate Alejandro Guillier.

As for Letelier, she received less than 1% of the vote in her district. During the campaign Piñera eventually distanced himself from Letelier’s comments and later her candidacy, but he also courted sectors of the community still loyal to Pinochet. The far right has raised its voice in recent years in opposition to social reforms regarding abortion and marriage equality, but also in relation to the memory question. “Pinochetistas” have publicly revived hardline narratives and appropriated the language of rights to demand the release of convicted human rights abusers, citing the prisoners’ advanced age among their justifications.

The flipside to the urgency felt on the pinochetista right is the campaign of victims and their supporters to bring remaining human rights abusers to justice before they die. Victims’ groups have pressed for a change to the legislation that has kept secret the information provided to truth and reconciliation commissions. Proposals are currently before Congress. Although not responsible for the current initiatives, outgoing president Michelle Bachelet did promise to consider removing the embargo, after a 2015 meeting with Gloria Quintana.

Carmen Gloria Quintana (left) and Rodrigo Rojas de Negri (right) prior to being set on fire in 1986. (see source)

The quemados case was reopened in 2015 after an ex-conscript, Fernando Guzmán, testified that Lieutenant Julio Castañer had ordered another recruit to douse Quintana and Rojas in gasoline before setting them alight. A second ex-conscript subsequently corroborated Guzmán’s testimony, and their version is in line with Quintana’s own 1987 testimony to Amnesty International.

Declassified CIA documents also show how the military launched a disinformation campaign in the wake of the incident, buried a compromising police report, and intimidated witnesses, judges, and lawyers. A 1991 finding in the military justice system codified this “official” version, finding no one responsible for Rojas’s death or the burning of Quintana. The narrative that Letelier insists on is the result of this process. It was already actual “fake news” in 1986. In 2017 the case reveals not only the fundamental divisions within Chilean memory, but also at least one unresolved silence.

Ex-conscripts have emerged as important witnesses in high profile cases, but not as narrators of their own stories. The 370,000 former recruits who served under Pinochet may be perpetrators, victims, both, or neither. They may vote left, right, or not at all. Many have a story to tell, but Chile still does not know how to process such shades of gray.

Ex-conscript groups are demanding recognition and benefits, with their appeals assuming their own urgency as their members approach old age and their health fails. While presidential candidates were quick to respond to an ill-

Leith Passmore

informed social media post, none made time to meet with the men drafted into Pinochet’s army. Theirs is a complex and difficult story that does not lend itself to sound bites.

Leith Passmore is a historian at the Universidad Andrés Bello in Santiago, Chile. He is the author of an earlier book, Ulrike Meinhof and the Red Army Faction: Performing Terrorism.