The Tripod

Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literature Anne Lambright recently won a prestigious grant from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation to study the cultural impact of terrorism in Peru. Lambright is a recipient of the Millicent C. McIntosh Fellowship, which is a grant that supports "especially promising" newly tenured faculty "who would benefit from additional time and resources to continue their scholarly work, but whose family and other obligations make it difficult for them to be away from their homes for extended periods of time," according to the Woodrow Wilson Foundation's Web site.

Lambright, who has taught at Trinity since 2000, will be researching how Peruvian culture has dealt with terrorism over the past few decades. Her work will focus on a Maoist guerrilla organization commonly referred to as Shining Path, which was the Communist Party of Peru that, in Lambright's words, "began a true reign of terror in the Peruvian Andes in 1980." In addition to the terror created by Shining Path, Lambright will also study the violence caused by Peru's counterterrorist organizations. "Generally the common people were caught in the middle," she said. "And the country is still dealing with the social, cultural, and psychological effects of the period."

From 1980 to 1992, an estimated 69,000 people were slaughtered or disappeared as a result of the violence in Peru. One question her work will attempt to answer is: How do violence and terror change a national culture and a country's understanding of itself?

Her sources will include literature, theater, film, the Internet, and the visual arts, which will aid her in her examination of how these cultural products are used as ways to understand and represent the trauma of years of continuous violence. "I'm interested not just in the culture that produces terror, but in the culture produced by years of sustained violence and terror," explained Lambright. She will travel to Peru twice during her two-year fellowship to interview writers, filmmakers, and performance artists. "The Fellowship is helpful because it allows me to take two shorter trips rather than a longer one," said Lambright, a mother of five.

Her interest in the subject came after completing her first book on José María Arguedas, a mid-twentieth century Peruvian anthropologist and creative writer. While researching recent Peruvian literature, film, and theater, Lambright "was struck by the abundance of representations of both guerrilla and state-sponsored terrorism." After the findings of Peru's Commission for Truth and Reconciliation were published in 2003, "artistic and creative responses have been flooding the scene, as if the country finally feels it can really start collectively contemplating and talking about its horrific experience," said Lambright.

She also noticed parallels between Peru's cultural responses to terrorism and those of other countries, like the United States. One chapter in her book will discuss the "importance of the dead body in Peruvian literature that comments on the proliferation of CSI-like shows on [American] television since 9/11."

Cultural representations of terror and trauma are a phenomenon that has generated a significant amount of scholarship lately, and Lambright will integrate the work of scholars like Ann E. Kaplan and Nelly Richard into her own.

Lambright plans to publish several articles on her work, as well as a book tentatively titled The Culture of Terror: Shining Path and Counterterrorism in the Peruvian National Imaginary.

The story of how Lambright was selected to be a McIntosh Fellow is an interesting one, as the Woodrow Wilson Foundation mistakenly sent its letter of invitation to Trinity University instead of Trinity College. When the Foundation finally realized its mistake, Dean of Faculty Rena Fraden invited the eligible members of Trinity's faculty to apply for the Fellowship.

Due to the Foundation's error, applicants were left with just three weeks to prepare a proposal and request letters of recommendation before the application materials were due, and Lambright had to hustle to get everything done. Her proposal included a description of the research project, her plans for publishing her work, and a budget for how she would use the fellowship funds over the next two years.

The Woodrow Wilson Foundation invites the faculty of 10 academic institutions each year to apply for the Fellowship. Of all the recently tenured faculty at each school that applied, only five were rewarded Fellowships this year. The Fellowship provides a stipend of $15,000 and home institutions are expected to contribute an additional $5,000 to recipients.

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