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August 25, 2025 – Hendrix
College will welcome Dr. Giovanni Batz, a Maya scholar and assistant professor
of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
to campus Sept. 8-9 as part of an Odyssey Professorship focused on colonialism
and its aftermath.
Batz will deliver a public lecture, Fourth
Invasion: Decolonizing Histories, Extractivism, and Maya Resistance in
Guatemala, on Tues., Sept. 9, at 7 p.m. in Mills Center for Social Sciences room
B. The event is free and open to the public.
The visit is coordinated by Dr. Stacey
Schwartzkopf, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Hendrix, who was
awarded the Margaret Berry Hutton Odyssey Professorship from 2023 to 2026 for
his project Empire’s Legacies – Peoples, Places, and Things in the Americas.
“Dr. Batz’s critical and collaborative
research on Ixil Maya resistance provides an essential perspective to
understand the links between the past, present, and future for Indigenous
peoples in the Americas,” Schwartzkopf said. “Hendrix students and the
community are fortunate to have this opportunity to hear and learn from their
voices.”
Based on more than a decade of ethnographic
research, The Fourth Invasion examines an Ixil Maya community’s movement against
the construction of one of the largest hydroelectric plants in Guatemala. The
project, known locally as the “new invasion” or “fourth invasion,” reflects a
continuation of cycles of violence beginning with Spanish colonization in 1524.
Batz argues that extractivist industries represent an ongoing colonial logic of
extraction that displaces Indigenous Peoples and disrupts their values,
territories, and ways of life.
Batz is the author of The Fourth Invasion:
Decolonizing Histories, Megaprojects, and Ixil Maya Resistance in Guatemala
(University of California Press, 2024), and La Cuarta Invasión: Historias y
Resistencias del Pueblo Ixil, y la Lucha contra la Hidroeléctrica Palo Viejo en
Cotzal, Quiché, Guatemala (Avancso, 2022). His scholarship focuses on
extractivist industries in Guatemala and Guatemalan-Maya transnational
migration to the United States.
Batz received his Ph.D. in Social
Anthropology at the University of Texas in 2017. He has held research
fellowships at the University of California, Davis, and the School for Advanced
Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has taught at Miami University (Ohio) and
New Mexico State University. He has served as an expert witness in asylum cases
and was recently featured in the documentary Borderland: The Line Within
(Skylight, 2024).
About
Hendrix College
Founded in 1876, Hendrix College is featured in Colleges
That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges
and celebrated among the country’s leading liberal arts colleges for academic
quality, engaged learning opportunities and career preparation, vibrant campus
life, and value. The Hendrix College Warriors compete in 21 NCAA Division III
sports. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since
1884. Learn more at www.hendrix.edu.
“… Through engagement that links the
classroom with the world, and a commitment to diversity, inclusion, justice,
and sustainable living, the Hendrix community inspires students to lead lives
of accomplishment, integrity, service, and joy.” –Hendrix
College Statement of Purpose