The 1st Biennial
U.S. Latina/o Literary Theory
and Criticism Conference
Haciendo
Caminos: Mapping the Futures of
U.S. Latina/o Literatures
John Jay College
of Criminal Justice
City University
of New York
March 7-9, 2013
Abstracts Due:
November 12, 2012
This
conference aims to draw a
critical mass of U.S. Latina/o
literary critics and theorists,
both foundational thinkers and
emerging voices, for the first
time in the history of the
field. In response to a
literature extant in the United
States for roughly 150 years,
U.S. Latina/o literary
scholarship has grown with
exponential force over the last
two decades. Thinking through an
array of subjects from borders
to exile, poetics to politics,
bilingualism, race, and
sexuality, U.S. Latina/o
literary scholarship offers new
dimensions to the study of
“American” literature. As the
inaugural conference, this
gathering marks a historic
intervention calling attention
to the robust contributions of
U.S. Latina/o writers. For too
long, academic conferences have
relegated Latina/o literary
scholars to isolated panels, in
large part fueled by the
erroneous perception that U.S.
Latina/o literature lacks the
depth and breadth of other
established literatures. Yet
this flies in the face not only
of a rich body of literature,
but scholarly community laboring
to shape the field and find
greater institutional
inclusion. Thus, this three-day
conference offers an exclusive
space for intellectual
exploration and exchange on a
literature that sits within
literary studies like the
proverbial elephant in the room,
just too substantial to
ignore. Consolidating the field,
inciting generative
conversations, creating
innovative modes of reading and
understanding, are some of the
scholarly objectives of this
conference.
Located in New
York City, home to one of the
largest and most diverse
Latina/o populations in the
country and birthplace to some
of the important literary
movements in Latina/o
literature, this conference
boldly calls for a fundamental
reawakening of the field. One
that provides the space for
critics of multiple U.S.
Latina/o literatures to
congregate and become (re)acquainted
in order to expand our
scholarship and build critical
networks of support. In an era
when Ethnic Studies is being
attacked, we must brazenly
champion, across our departments
and institutions, a brilliant
literature and scholarship that
shine a path to a more complex
and just humanity.
In addition to
two days of panels by scholars
from around the country, this
conference will include the
following special events:
Thursday, March 7th:
Opening address by
Ramon
Saldivar, Stanford
University
Friday, March 8th:
Roundtable discussion with:
Mary Pat Brady, Cornell
University, José
Esteban Muñoz, New
York University,
Frances
Negrón-Muntaner, Columbia
University
Saturday, March 9th:
Junot
Díaz in
conversation with
Silvio
Torres-Saillant,
Syracuse University
Proposals for
panels or individual papers are
welcomed. Undergraduate and
graduate student submissions are
encouraged.
Papers might
include, but are not limited to
the following:
Illegal Borders
and Imaginative Boundaries
Citizenship,
Strangers, Politics of Exile
Affective States
Latina/o
Phenomenologies
Diaspora,
Displacement, and Relocation
Spic-ing English:
Aesthetics and Bilingualism
Afro-Latinidad
and Reimagining Race
Class and the
Violence of Everyday Life
Gender and
Literature
Queer Futures
Dis-Abilities
Coloniality and
Modernity
Transnationalism
and Hemispheric Studies
Literature and
Nation in the Age of Global
Capital
Human Rights and
Activism
Latina Feminism
New and Old
Genres: Poetry, Drama, and the
Graphic Novel
Latinidades
Abstracts Due
11/12/12
Conference
Registration $65
Please send
abstracts of 250 words and
queries to Professors Richard
Perez and Belinda Linn Rincon at
latlitconfnyc@gmail.co