Hannah Pinilla
Candidate, M.A. Public History
| Degrees: | B.A. Honours Public History, minor Sociology (Concordia University 2018-2021) |
| Email: | hannahpinilla@cmail.carleton.ca |
Current Program (including year of entry): M.A. Public History, specialization Digital Humanities (2022)
Supervisors:
Dr. John Walsh & Dr. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera
Academic Interests:
Diaspora and migration, memory studies, Latin American history, material culture, ‘disruptive’ art in public space, food histories and food ways, queer historiography, oral history methodologies, public history, GIS and digital mapping
Select Publications and Current Projects:
Pinilla, Hannah. 2022. “Trailblazers: A Collaborative Oral History Project with Ottawa Birdwatchers” – a community-based, digital history project in collaboration with a community of Ottawa birdwatchers completed for DIGH 5000: Issues in Digital Humanities. The website can be accessed here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/176ff8ef0fc24223b8ce6d32d4af36c3
Selected Conference Contributions:
Pinilla, Hannah. “Reproducing Mexico During the Golden Age of Cinema: The Roles of Exceptional Cinematic Women On and Off-Screen in the Nation-Building Project.” Tri-University History Conference, March 2023.
Pinilla, Hannah. “The Co-creation of ‘Taste of Home: Tracing Identity, Agency, and Memory in the Oral History of a Thai-Canadian Restaurateur’.” Carleton University: Underhill Graduate Student Colloquium. March 17, 2023.
Pinilla, Hannah. “Marjuana, Madness, and Modernity: The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission as a Space of Colonial Tension.” University of Calgary: Calgary Sociology Symposium. March 3, 2023.
Pinilla, Hannah. “Canvassing Violent Memories: The Aestheticization of La Violencia in Contemporary Colombian Arte Urbano.” York University: New Frontiers Graduate History Conference, February 23-25, 2023. (Forthcoming)
Teaching Experience:
T.A. HIST 2600: History of Russia (Dr. Erica Fraser), Fall and Winter 2023
Description of Research
As a third-generation Canadian, I have often felt a disconnect from my Colombian heritage and I bridge that gap through the oral histories of my grandparents and cultural foodstuffs and food practices that they have shared with me. My MRE focuses on food practices of Colombian Canadians as forms of embodied memory. I will show how embodied memories are constructed through food practice including preparation and consumption of foodstuffs, in the life history narrations of Colombian expatriates living in Montreal I intend to create a digital memoryscape in the form of an interactive exhibit incorporating videos from the interview sessions, an interactive map, and cooking activities.
I will interview my partners through a series of shared cooking sessions in order to co-create a space to meaningfully engage with the Colombian migrant community in Quebec. Using the oral history methodology, I will explore food as a tool of memory recall, attempting to answer the following questions with my research: In what ways can food serve as an analytical tool for historians to understand how memory has migrated and is linked to social identity formation of migrants in host countries? What are the food practices Colombian migrants use to represent identity and to what extent does the preparation, consumption, and sharing of food constitute ‘memory work’? How does the dialectical relationship between identity and memory manifest through food practice and what impact does it have on the process of home-building? How does food, and the memories it conjures and creates, help Colombian migrants to consolidate their past and their present?