Teresa Porzecanski Cohen (born May 5th 1945) is a

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

an anthropologist, writer and academic.

Biography

Porzecanski Cohen was born and raised in

Montevideo Montevideo (, ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,302,954 (about 37.2% of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

to a Jewish family. Her father was an

Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

from

Liepāja Liepāja () (formerly: Libau) is a Administrative divisions of Latvia, state city in western Latvia, located on the Baltic Sea. It is the largest city in the Courland region and the third-largest in the country after Riga and Daugavpils. It is an ...

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

and her mother, a

Sephardic Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

from

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

. She graduated from the

University of the Republic The University of the Republic (, sometimes ''UdelaR'') is a public research university in Montevideo, Uruguay. It is the country's oldest and largest university, as well as one of the largest public universities in South America in terms of en ...

with a degree in social work. Her works have included a focus on the Jewish communities of Uruguay, afrodescendant minorities, as well as prejudice and ethnic issues. She has been is a professor and academic at the

Catholic University of Uruguay Catholic University of Uruguay () (UCU) is a private university in Uruguay. Established in 1985 as the successor to several Catholic educational institutes dating back to the 1870s, it was the only private university in the country until 1996. It ...

, the Latin American Center for Human Economy and the

. From 1978-1981, she collected oral histories of Jewish immigrants which was published as ''Life Stories of Jewish Immigrants to Uruguay'' in its first edition in Spanish in 1986. In a review for the American Jewish Archives,

Alejandro Lilienthal Alejandro is the Spanish form of the name Alexander. Alejandro has multiple variations in different languages, including Aleksander (Czech, Polish), Alexandre (French), Alexandros (Greek), Alsander ( Irish), Alessandro (Italian), Aleksandr (Russ ...

called it a good introduction to the subject, outside of the transcriptions of the oral histories. Her fiction is part of a tradition of works exploring identities and migration maladjustments, prejudice against minorities, and women interior worlds. In 1992, she received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

, during which she studied the Sephardim and rabbinic lore. She has also received a

Fulbright scholarship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...

. as well as a Rockefeller Residency Grant in Bellagio, Italy, to write her fiction. She received five awards by the Ministry of Education of Uruguay, two awards by the Municipality of Montevideo, the Critics Award Bartolomé Hidalgo (1995) and the Morosoli Award for Literature (2004).

Selected works

Fiction

*1967, ''The Riddle and other stories'' (''El acertijo y otros cuentos'') *1979, ''Constructions'' (''Construcciones'') *1981, ''Sun Inventions'' (''Invención de los soles'') *1986, ''An Erotic Novel'' (''Una novela erótica'') *1989, ''Messiah in Montevideo'' (''Mesías en Montevideo'') *1989, ''Breath is a Forge'' (''La respiración es una fragua'') *1994, ''Perfumes of Cartaghe'' (''Perfumes de Cartago'') *1996, ''The skin of the soul'' (''La piel del alma'') *2002, ''Fleeting happiness'' (''Felicidades fugaces'')

Nonfiction

*1986, ''Life Stories of Jewish Immigrants to Uruguay'' (''La vida empezó acá : inmigrantes judíos al Uruguay : historias de vida y perspectiva antropológica de la conformación de la comunidad judía uruguaya, contrastes culturales y procesos de enculturación'') (2nd ed, 2005) *2004, (with

Pablo Dabezies Pablo Bernardo Dabezies Antía, also known as Paul Dabezies (6 July 1940 – 28 August 2021) was a Uruguayan theologian and Roman Catholic priest. Selected works * (with Teresa Porzecanski, Gerardo Caetano Gerardo Caetano Hargain (born 30 ...

Gerardo Caetano Gerardo Caetano Hargain (born 30 April 1958) is a Uruguayan historian, professor, political scientist, and former association football player. Selected works * ''La agonía del reformismo (1916-1925)''. Montevideo: CLAEH, 1983 * ''El asedio co ...

, and other authors).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Porzecanski, Teresa 1945 births Living people Uruguayan anthropologists Uruguayan women anthropologists 20th-century Uruguayan women writers Uruguayan Jews Uruguayan people of Latvian-Jewish descent Uruguayan people of Syrian-Jewish descent Jewish anthropologists