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 “Life and Death in Latinx Literatures” 5th Biennial U.S. Latinx Literary Theory and Criticism Conference

5th Biennial U.S. Latinx Literary Theory and Criticism Conference

 

“Life and Death in Latinx Literatures”

April 5th-April 7th, 2023

Abstracts Due: January 9th, 2023

 

 

This conference explores the material and symbolic impact of life and death in Latinx literatures.  Latinx writers address the distortions produced by the afterlives of colonial inheritances, blurring the borders between life and death.  The aberrant logic of (neo)colonial practices aim to close the distance between life and death, bringing the two states into uncanny proximity by instituting death where life should flourish.   These precarious states, from anti-immigration policies to carceral and racial capitalism to environmental catastrophes and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Latinx communities, serve, for Latinx writers, as anti-colonial preoccupations informing narratives intent on writing themselves back to life.  Drawing from the ruins of capitalist society, therefore, Latinx literature re-presents and re-envisions social, political and historical legacies in an attempt to resignify life in anti-colonial and decolonial terms.  In so doing, Latinx literature explores animate forms and practices, recuperating and expanding experience to offer alternate modalities of existence.  This conference asks: How does systemic violence assert forms of death that haunt the lives of peoples of color?  How do the aberrant hierarchies of gender and sexuality circumscribe the potentiality of women, non-binary folx, and queer forms of power? And how does the predatory emphasis of capitalism feed off peoples’ lives, destroy ecologies for profit, and promote wars that tame and forge markets?  But also, how do Latinx writers imagine otherwise and create alternate ways of living?  Moreover, how do Latinx imaginaries inform political movements and other forms of resistance intent on reconfiguring consciousness?  How do utopic or anarchic visions, environmental awareness, disability and corporeal and neural diversity insist on the radical openness of social formations?   How do Indigenous and African traditions suggest new epistemologies from which to organize life, philosophize being, and complicate aesthetic engagements?

 

** To facilitate wider participation in the conference and accommodate those who cannot or choose not to travel, we will be arranging hybrid panels and livestream options. More information will be forthcoming.

 

 

Date: Wednesday, April 5, 2023
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Richard T. Rodríguez, Professor of Media & Cultural Studies and English, University of California, Riverside

 

Date: Thursday, April 6, 2023

Poetry Roundtable

 

Dr. Alan Pelaez Lopez, Poet and Assistant Professor of Queer Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University

 

Dr. Lara Mimosa Montes, Poet and Instructor at the University of Minnesota

 

Dr. Deborah Paredez, Poet and Professor of Creative Writing and Ethnic Studies, Columbia University

 

Dr. Melissa Castillo Planas, moderator, Poet and Associate Professor of English at Lehman College, CUNY

 

This year’s conference will be held at The City University of New York Graduate Center. Located in the heart of midtown Manhattan and blocks away from the Empire State Building and Times Square, The Graduate Center is a vibrant setting perfect sharing scholarship and building community.

 

 

 

Topics May Include:

Systemic Violence and Social Death

Biodiversity and Multispecies Environments

Engendering Futures

Disability and Bodily Forms

Endurance: Labor and Alienation

De/animating languages

Aesthetics or Reconceptualizing Subjects and Objects

Soundscapes and Animated Beings

Latinx Gothic and Horror Imaginaries

Queering Life

Vital Materialities

Fetishizing Life

Affect and Ugly Feelings

Killing, Dying and the Costs of War

Melancholy and Race

Sensory Life

Reimagining Life and Death

Legal Violence and Slow Death

Ontologies of Vulnerability and Resistance

Biopolitical and Necropolitical Governance

 

We also encourage panels on the following topics:

Pedagogy workshops

Syllabus exchanges

Digital Humanities in Latinx Literature

Mentorship

Program and curricular development

 

Submit 150-250 word abstracts to this proposal submission link on or before January 9, 2023, by midnight. Proposed panels should include a short description (150 words) and abstracts for each presenter. Notification of acceptance will be mailed out by January 13th.

 

 

Conference Fees for In-person Presentations:

Professors: $150.00

Late registration after March 6th: $200.00

Graduate students: $70.00

Independent scholars: $70.00

Undergraduate students: $20.00

 

Conference Fees for Virtual Presentations:

Professors: $120.00

Late registration after March 6th: $150.00

Graduate students: $50.00

Independent scholars: $50.00

Undergraduate students: $15.00

 

 

 

For all inquiries, please email us at latlitconfny@gmail.com. We hope to see you in April!

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