Claudia Valeggia Kicked Off the New CLAIS Professional Development Series for K12 Teachers
On Thursday, October 5th, CLAIS kicked off the Professional Development Series for Public School Teachers in collaboration with the Yale Office of New Haven Affairs. Dr. Claudia Valeggia, CLAIS Chair and Professor of Anthropology, gave the talk “Lives in transition: the health of indigenous peoples in Latin America” to an enthusiastic crowd of school teachers and other community members.
Dr. Claudia Valeggia, originally from Argentina, studies the interactions between human reproductive biology and the ecological and cultural context in which it develops. Her research interests include human reproductive ecology, maternal and child health, and the health of indigenous people in Latin America. In her talk, she discussed how lifestyle and environmental changes affect indigenous populations’ health and well-being in Latin America, particularly in Northern Argentina.
Dr. Valeggia began by discussing how she first became interested in understanding the female body in different ecological contexts. Her career began by examining memory processes and opiates in crabs and shifted to researching the sexual development of small monkeys when she began pursuing her doctoral degree at the University of California, Davis. Eventually, Dr. Valeggia’s personal experiences with motherhood sparked an interest in studying motherhood, hormones, and reproductive health.
As an Argentinian, Dr. Valeggia acknowledged how fortunate she is to engage with indigenous communities as they undergo certain transitions. She explained that there are no pluralistic views of healing practices in Argentina, and little acknowledgment of the country’s indigenous heritage. Indigenous communities in Argentina are typically populations in transition, living in semi-urban communities along the sombrero negro — a term for the areas where people still rely a lot on foraging and subsidies from the government, but their diets are much richer than the average person. Within this context, Dr. Valeggia focused on how indigenous communities create narratives surrounding puberty, hormones, and sexual development, and explained how the ways in which resources are shared affects childhood biological development, breastfeeding and post-partum fecundity.
Afterward, amidst a delicious spread of fresh vegetables, pita, hummus, and tzatziki — followed by catering from a local Middle Eastern restaurant — Dr. Valeggia answered further questions from audience members interested in hearing more about her experiences with indigenous communities.
Dr. Valeggia focused on how indigenous communities create narratives surrounding puberty, hormones, and sexual development, and explained how the ways in which resources are shared affects childhood biological development, breastfeeding and post-partum fecundity.
Bianca Howell, a second-year undergraduate student in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, is currently enrolled in Dr. Valeggia’s course “Evolutionary Biology of Women’s Reproductive Lives” and attended the event to learn more about the ethnographic process. “Professor Valeggia has talked a lot about her experiences with indigenous communities in class, so I had a feeling she would elaborate on her experiences in this talk. I was delighted to get a more in-depth debriefing of her work; she’s very generous for directly sharing what she’s observed.” Howell also noted how “there can be some intentional inaccessibility, sometimes, to protect what is sacred or private, so I appreciated how Dr. Valeggia told us some funny anecdotes, and it’s clear how much she cares about the people she works with and is in community with. She sees people as equals, and her pedagogy reflects that; she’s very intentional about the lines she walks in terms of consent and handling the immense trust people have in her, and what she does with the information people give to her.”
The next session will take place on Thursday, November 2nd in Leitner Planetarium from 4:30-6:30PM. Organized by CLAIS in collaboration with the Yale Office of New Haven Affais, it will feature Peruvian writer-director Alonso Llosa about the benefits and challenges of independent filmmaking in Latin America and the role of government funding in producing movies.
By Inês Forjaz de Lacerda, Graduate Communications Fellow, ines.lacerda@yale.edu