Molly Dooley Appel

Traces how Alicia Partnoy’s testimonio, The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival in Argentina (1986), mobilizes the metaphor of “bad student” not only to teach about the structural and personal violence of Argentina’s last dictatorship, but also make space for readers to grapple with how to be resistant learners within instructional frameworks of classroom, public, and cultural pedagogies that appropriate human rights discourse for violence. 

Presents an experiential exercise that provides a framework for addressing complex interpersonal issues in the workplace. Drawing on the concept of testimonio, a theory grounded in Latin American cultural and literary studies, the exercise involves guiding students through the understanding of interpersonal workplace scenarios, taking into account the experiences of employees from both social and legal perspectives, and developing multiple solutions while anticipating the consequences of those solutions.

Presents a new way of understanding how filmmakers are approaching human rights advocacy while still working within the reality of neoliberal, global production structures. Juxtaposes the production processes and narrative forms of two contemporaneous films about the Bolivian Water Wars in early 2000, examining how both films metafictionally depict this social movement as a course-correction for cinema’s approaches to human rights storytelling.

Argues that Puerto Rican Obituary, as part of an anticolonial project, makes a critical link between social resilience and pedagogical resistance and the ongoing effects of US colonialism on the Puerto Rican community.