Native American studies professor emeritus Stefano Varese combines personal and family recollections with incisive accounts of academic, political and institutional experiences in his book The Art of Memory (University of North Carolina Press, December 2020). The memoir offers a remarkable account of his life as a foremost Latin American ethnographer and a leading expert in Indigenous cultures, peoples and cosmologies.

Professor Emeritus Varese is an anthropologist (social, political, and cultural), specialized in Indigenous people (American Indians, Native Americans) of the Americas. His areas of concentration: Amazon Region, Andean Region, Central America, Mexico, US West and Southern borderlands, Latin American Indian Diaspora, hemispheric and global perspectives. His interests include Indigenous community development, agro-ecological and sustainable development, cultural/economic/political self-determination, territorial management, rural-urban migration, transnational migration, cultural resource management, poverty alleviation strategies, Indigenous peoples human rights. He was awarded the OXFAM Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Martin Diskin Lectureship for Activist Scholarship.  The award was presented on June 8, 2013 at the LASA meeting in Washington D.C., at which time Professor Varese delivered his address. In 2017, he was the recipient of the Medal Haydee Santamaría awarded by the Casa de las Américas and the Cuban Government for cultural contributions and people friendship of Peru and Cuba.

View the book at The University of North Carolina Press