Lily Pearl Balloffet (Latin American and Latino Studies, UC Santa Cruz) will discuss her recent book, Argentina in the Global Middle East, in conversation with Devi Mays (University of Michigan).

Argentina in the Global Middle East connects modern Latin American and Middle Eastern history through their shared links to global migration systems. By following the mobile lives of individuals with roots in the Levantine Middle East, Lily Pearl Balloffet sheds light on the intersections of ethnicity, migrant–homeland ties, and international relations

Lily Pearl Balloffet is a scholar of migration, mobility, and inter-American relations in historical context. Her current book project, American Venom: Snakes & Our Interconnected Hemisphere bridges environmental, medical, and labor histories of moving people and animals in the Caribbean Basin. She has also published articles in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of North African & Middle East Migration Studies, Latin American Studies Association Forum, and The Latin Americanist. Other research and teaching interests include contemporary Latin American hip hop, and social revolutions.

Devi Mays is Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. (PhD, History and Jewish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington). Dr. Mays researches transnational Jewish networks in the Mediterranean and global contexts, with a focus on Sephardic Jews. She is the author of Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora (Stanford University Press, 2020) – a history of migration and nation-building from the vantage point of those who lived between states.

Co-sponsored by the Latin American and Latino Studies Department.