LSA 2020
July 15-18, 2020
Call for Papers
Deadline: Nov. 1, 2019 by 5:00 pm EST
Hosted at the University of Notre Dame
South Bend, IN
Beyond Borders: Latina/o Studies in Times of Crisis
Walls. Children in cages. Natural disasters. Anti-immigrant sentiment. Attacks against LGBTQ communities. Attacks against women’s rights. White supremacy. The criminalization of refugees. Institutional racism. These are just a few signs that remind us that we are living in times of crisis. Though none of these issues are new, their intensity in recent years urgently demands our collective action. The LSA 2020 Conference seeks to provide a space to discuss, strategize, and promote action for the benefit of Latina/o/x communities across borders.
Physical borders are material and concrete divisions that affect the lives of many Latina/o/xs, but also occur in less tangible forms, through structural, systemic, and even psychic borders that divide us both from U.S. society and amongst ourselves. Nationalism, race, ethnicity, class, colorism, sexuality, gender, ability, age, citizenship status, religion, language, and colonialism—and their intersections—produce and perpetuate such borders.
These inequalities are also reflected in the field of Latina/o/x studies itself. By holding the 2020 Conference in South Bend, Indiana—a city in the rural Midwest with an established Latina/o/x community—we encourage participants to engage with scholars, community organizers, and activists beyond the traditional geographical areas (West Coast, Southwest, East Coast, Florida) that are more often represented in our field. Likewise, we encourage participants to consider addressing the experiences of underrepresented communities in Latina/o studies including Afro-Latina/os, Indigenous peoples, LGBTQ, Central and South Americans, linguistic minorities, and non-Hispanophone Latina/os who are often excluded from this category, such as Haitians, the Garífuna, and Brazilians. In addition, we also encourage interdisciplinary deliberation about how to build stronger solidarity networks among scholars, activists, community organizations, artists, and other actors in these times of crisis.
Additional Topics to Consider:
• Decolonizing Latina/o/x Studies
• How do conversations about coloniality, decoloniality, and settler colonialism continue to shape the field?
• Latina/o/x intersectionalities
• How might a rigorous conversation about intersectionality help us further elaborate Latina/o/x studies, its exclusions, and its contributions?
• Disaster discourse
• How is disaster or crisis discourse being used against Latina/o/x communities?
• Ecocriticism
• How do emergent and traditional discourses about the environment and environmentalism help us think through Latina/o/x studies?
• How might addressing the climate crisis help us think of a global Latina/o/x studies,
especially as a possible counter-discourse to neoliberalism and globalization?
• Debt crisis, Hurricane María, and the #RickyRenuncia movement in Puerto Rico
• How would attending to historical, continued, and emergent colonial administrative practices and discourses help us further build a critical conversation around coloniality and debt as exacerbants of Hurricane María’s catastrophic humanitarian, ecological, political, and economic crises?
• Role of Latina/o/xs in the 2020 US election
• How do political theoretical and sociological analyses account for Latina/o/x politics?
• Home countries
• What role can and should Latina/o/x studies scholars play in addressing the conditions in Latin American countries, and their impacts on the hemisphere at large?
Proposal Submission Guidelines:
The program committee welcomes proposals with diverse formats but will give preference to organized panels, roundtables, and workshops. Individual presentations, poster presentations, and other creative formats will also be considered. Submissions for participation should be submitted through the conference management website here.
Please make sure to have the information listed below ready before submission to the system.
Panel proposals must include the following:
• Names of participants (list organizer first, followed by presenters)
• Panel title
• 300-word panel abstract
• Format (e.g. panel, roundtable, workshop ) including A/V needs or special accommodations
• For each presenter, include the following:
• Contact information
• Position or title
• Institutional /organization affiliation
• Discipline (if applicable)
• Title of presentation and 150-word abstract
Individual paper submissions must include the following:
• Name and contact information
• Position or title
• Institutional/organizational affiliation
• Discipline (if applicable)
• Title of presentation and a 400-word abstract.
Proposals are due on Friday Nov. 1, 2019 by 5:00 pm EST. Click here to submit proposal.
