Dr. Cynthia Milton

Bio

Cynthia E. Milton joined the University of Victoria on September 1, 2020, with an academic appointment in the Department of History.

Dr. Milton is Past President of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada and former Canada Research Chair in the History Department at the Université de Montréal.

Her interdisciplinary research studies inclusive modes of truth-telling, transitional justice, memory, and cultural interventions in the construction of historical narratives after state violence. In her academic networking, she is concerned with the science-society disconnect in our dramatically changing world and the need for the humanities, arts and social sciences in the diffusion of knowledge.

Major honours include the Bolton-Johnson Prize (2008), an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (2011-12), a Fernand Braudel Fellowship from the European University Institute (2016), and a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Fellowship (2019-20).

 

Selected Publications

                                                                                                                                   
Books

Cynthia E. Milton and Michael J. Lazzara, eds. How the Military Remembers: Countermemories and Challenges to Human Rights in Latin America. Edited book project, University of Wisconsin Press (under consideration)
 
Constance Backhouse, Cynthia Milton, Margaret Kovach and Adele Perry, eds., Royally Wronged: The Royal Society of Canada and the Marginalization of Indigenous Knowledge. McGill-Queen’s University Press, (submitted)
 
Cynthia E. Milton, Contramemorias: las intervenciones militares culturales en la era de los derechos humanos. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Expected Spring 2021. Translation of Conflicted Memory.
 
Cynthia E. Milton, Conflicted Memory: Military Cultural Interventions and the Human Rights Era in Peru, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2018, 288pp. Revised paperback edition January 2020.
 
Cynthia E. Milton, ed., Arte de un pasado fracturado: memoria y verdades alternativas en el Perú. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2018. Translation of Art from a Fractured Past. 352pp.
 
Cynthia E. Milton, ed., Art from a Fractured Past: Memory and Truth-Telling in Post–Shining Path Peru (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2014), 320pp.
 
Erica Lehrer, Cynthia E. Milton, and Monica E. Patterson, eds. Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 232pp.
 
Cynthia E. Milton, The Many Meanings of Poverty: Colonialism, Social Compacts and Assistance in Eighteenth-Century Ecuador (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2007), xxi + 356pp.
 
Ksenija Bilbija, Jo Ellen Fair, Cynthia Milton, and Leigh Payne, eds., The Art of Truth-Telling about Authoritarian Rule (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2005), ix + 138pp.


Book Chapters

with Constance Backhouse, Introduction “Royally Wronged and How to Write: Indigenous Marginalization in the RSC.” In Royally Wronged: The Royal Society of Canada and the Marginalization of Indigenous Knowledge. Constance Backhouse, Cynthia Milton, Margaret Kovach and Adele Perry, eds., McGill-Queen’s University Press, (submitted)
 
“‘Not a Little Disappointment’: The Postcolonial Predicament of Emulation and Exclusion.” In Royally Wronged. Constance Backhouse, Cynthia Milton, Margaret Kovach and Adele Perry, eds., McGill-Queen’s University Press, (under consideration) (8,000 words)
 
“Art as Remembrance and Trace in Post-Conflict Latin America.” In Posthumanism in Art and Science: A Reader, eds., Giovanni Aloi. New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming. Reprint
 
“Muerte en los Andes: los cómicos como medio de abordar historias de violencia política en Perú.” In Cómics y memoria en América Latina. Jorge Catalá-Carrasco, Paulo Drinot and James Scorcer eds. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 2019, 173-203. Translation of  “Death in the Andes.” 
 
 “Artistic Silhouettes.” In Memory. Philippe Tortell, Mark Turner and Margot Young eds. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018, 105-112.
 
“Imágenes de la verdad: rescatar las memorias de la guerra interna peruana a través del arte testimonial.” In Arte desde un pasado fracturado. Cynthia E. Milton, ed. Lima: IEP, 2018, 53-93. Spanish translation.
 
“Introducción: El arte desde el pasado fracturado.” In Arte desde un pasado fracturado. Cynthia E. Milton, ed. Lima: IEP, 2018, 15-52. Spanish translation.
 
 “Death in the Andes: Comics as Means to Broach Stories of Political Violence in Peru.” In Comics and Memory in Latin America. Jorge Catalá-Carrasco, Paulo Drinot and James Scorcer eds. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2017, 166-196.
           
“Art as Remembrance and Trace in Post-Conflict Latin America.” In Art as Political Witness. Frank Möller and Kia Lindroos eds. Opladen, Berlin, Toronto: Barbara Budrich Publishers 2017, 117-138.
 
“The Truth Ten Years On: The CVR in Peru.” In The Struggle for Memory in Latin American
Recent History and Political Violence. Eugenia Allier Montaño and Emilio Crenzel eds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 111-128.
 
“La verdad después de 10 años de la CVR en el Perú.” In Las luchas por la memoria en América latina. Historia reciente y violencia política. México, UNAM, 2015. Translation of “The Truth Ten Years On.”
 
“Art from Peru’s Fractured Past.” In Art from a Fractured Past: Memory and Truth-Telling in Post-Shining Path Peru. Cynthia E. Milton, ed. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014, 1-34.
 
“Images of Truth: Rescuing Memories of Peru’s Internal War through Testimonial Art.” In Art from a Fractured Past: Memory and Truth-Telling in Post-Shining Path Peru. Cynthia E. Milton, ed. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014, 37-74.
 
with Erica Lehrer “Witnesses to our Witnessing.” In Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places. Lehrer, Milton and Patterson eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 1-19.
 
with Maria Eugenia Ulfe, “Promoting Peru: Tourism and Post-Conflict Memory.” In Accounting for Violence: the Memory Market in Latin America. Ksenija Bilbija and Leigh Payne, eds. Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2011, 304-43.
 
“Through the Grapevine.” In The Art of Truth-telling about Authoritarian Rule. Ksenija Bilbija, Jo Ellen Fair, Cynthia Milton, and Leigh Payne, eds. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2005, 34-40.
 
“Naming” In The Art of Truth-telling about Authoritarian Rule. Ksenija Bilbija, Jo Ellen Fair, Cynthia Milton, and Leigh Payne, eds. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2005, 104-109.
 
“Poverty.” In Iberia and the Americas: Culture Politics, and History. J. Michael Francis, ed. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005, 869-73.

Peer-Reviewed Articles
 
“Afterword,” Numéro spécial « Et après ? Mémoire, histoire et éthique pour faire face au passé » Special Issue “Dealing with Difficult Pasts: Memory, History and Ethics,” Les ateliers de l’éthique, 14(2), Sept 2020, 274-281, https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/ateliers/2019-v14-n2-ateliers05462/.
 
With Steven Cooke et al., “Diverse Perspectives on Interdisciplinarity from Members of the College of the Royal Society of Canada” FACETS, March 2020, https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2019-0044
 
with Anne-Marie Reynaud, “Archives, Museums and Sacred Storage: Dealing with the After-life of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.” International Journal of Transitional Justice, 13(3), 2019: 524–545. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijz027
 
“Curating Memories of Armed State Actors in Peru’s Era of Transitional Justice,” Memory Studies, 8(3), 2016: 361-378.
 
“Defacing Memory: (Un)tying Peru’s Memory Knots,” Memory Studies, 4(2), 2011: 190-205. Also in Lehrer, Milton and Patterson, Curating Difficult Knowledge.
 
“Images of Truth: Art as a Medium for Recounting Peru’s Internal War,” Contracorriente, 60:2, (2008): 64-103.
 
“Public Spaces for the Discussion of Past Violence: the Case of Peru,” Antipoda – Revista de Antropologia y Arqueologia, (July-December 2007): 143-68.
 
“At the Edge of the Peruvian Truth Commission: Alternative Paths to Recounting the Past,” Radical History Review, 98, (Spring, 2007): 3-33.
 
“Poverty and the Politics of Colonialism: ‘Poor Spaniards,’ Their Petitions, and the Erosion of Privilege in Late Colonial Quito,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 85:4, (2005): 595-626.
 
“Wandering Waifs and Abandoned Babes: the Limits and Uses of Juvenile Welfare in Eighteenth-Century Quito,” Colonial Latin American Review, 31:1, (2004): 103-128.
 
Milton, Cynthia, and Ben Vinson III. “Counting Heads: Race and Non-Native Tribute Policy in Colonial Spanish America,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 3:3, (2002): s/n.

Non Peer-Reviewed Articles

“La pluma en vez de la espada: Contramemorias militares y sus intervenciones culturales
después de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación,”  Revista Memoria, Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos, PUCP, no. 23 (2017): 12-21.
http://cdn01.pucp.education/idehpucp/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/15212417/revista-memoria24-dic2017.pdf
 
“The Captive.” (Principal author, though written in consultation with Maria Eugenia Ulfe and Karen Bernedo.) La Cautiva, written by Luis Alberto León and directed by Chela de Ferrari, E-misférica 12(1), 2015.
 
“Parallel Lies?: Peru’s Cultural Memory Battles Go International” in “After Truth,”  é-misferica, 7:2 (2011), 1-3 http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/e-misferica-72/milton.
 
with Maria Eugenia Ulfe “¿Y, después de la verdad? El espacio público y las luchas por la memoria en la post CVR, Perú,” in “After Truth” é-misferica, 7(2), 2010: 1-14, http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/e-misferica-72/miltonulfe.

 
Participation in Collaborative and Community-Based Projects

Shelley Butler, Jennifer Carter, Erica Lehrer, Heather Igloliorte and Cynthia Milton, Beyond Museum Walls (2017-present), http://capsl.cerev.ca/beyond-museum-walls/
 
Community-University Research Alliances (SSHRC), “The Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by War, Genocide and Other Human Rights Violations;” part of the original team of funding applicants. Principal investigator: Seven High, Concordia University.
 
Pilar Riaño et al., Remembering and Narrating Conflict with the Center of Historical Memory in
Colombia, http://reconstructinghistoricalmemory.com/. Published in English and Spanish by the  Center of Historical Memory, Colombia, 2014. 
 
Public Scholarship
Exhibitions:

• Curator: Visual Footnotes: Art from a Fractured Past, CEREV/CaPSL Concordia University, March 16, 2018, http://capsl.cerev.ca/visual-footnotes/
• Co-coordinator of the Itinerant Exhibition of the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Chile) as part of an FQRSC Team Grant, CEREV, Concordia, September 30 to October 9, 2015.

 Multimedia:

• “Rescate por la memoria: arte y memoria después de la violencia,” Rescate por la memoria, Text and CD, Lima: SER, 2010. (Funded through the CRC in Latin American History)

 Blogs:

• On Voices of the College, http://rsc-src-college.ca:

     “Notes from Happy Valley-Goose Bay: the College Goes North” (September 2017)
     “Women’s Rights are Human Rights: the Intersectionality of the Women’s March on January      
       21, 2017 (February 7, 2017).

• “Naming and the Visual Technologies of the CMHR,” Cultural Studies Research Group Blog.

The University of Winnipeg, October 14, 2014. http://uwinnipeg.ca/csrg/blog/2014/10/namingand-the-visual-technologies-of-the-cmhr.html
 
Critiques and Reviews (books, films and theater):
Mots d’introduction au lancement d'ouvrages ÉRIGAL, Montréal, 21 février 2019. Les espaces publics, la démocratie et les gauches en Amérique latine" de Julián Durazo-Hermann, Presses de l’Université Laval et Legacies of the Left Turn in Latin America : The Promise of Inclusive Citizenship de Manuel Balán et Françoise Montambeault, Notre Dame University Press.
 
Fernando J. Rosenberg "After Human Rights: Literature, Visual Arts, and Film in Latin America, 1990-2010", Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 48:3 (2018): 305-7.
 
Francesca Denegri and Alexandra Hibbett (eds.), "Dando cuenta: Estudios sobre el testimonio de la violencia política en el Perú (1980-2000)," Journal of Latin American Studies, 15:1 (2018): 232-234.
 
Anne Lambright, "Andean Truths: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining Path Peru," Journal of Latin American Studies, 49:4 (2017): 1005-1005.
 
Vicki Bell, “The Art of Post-Dictatorship: Ethics and Aesthetics in Transitional Argentina,” (Abingdon, UK, and New York: Routledge, 2016), Journal of Latin American Studies, 48:4 (2016): 893-895.
 
Jacqueline Adams, Art Against Dictatorship: Making and Exporting ‘Arpilleras’ Under Pinochet (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014), pp. xii + 297, £40.00, hb. Journal of Latin American Studies, 48:1 (2016): 199-201.
 
Miguel La Serna, “The Corner of the Living: Ayacucho on the Eve of the Shining Path Insurgency,” The Americas, 70:2 (October 2013): 309-311.
 
Bianca Premo, “Raising an Empire: Children in Early Modern Iberia and Colonial Latin America,” Hispanic American Historical Review 89:2 (May 2009): 346-347.