CALL FOR PAPERS:
2012 ACLA Conference Panel
ACLA 2012 Annual Conference: “Collapse/Catastrophe/Change”
Brown University, Providence, RI, March 29 - April 1, 2012
Panel Subject: “Performing Crises of Existence in the Caribbean and Latin America”
The Caribbean and Latin America are no strangers to “collapse/catastrophe/[and]change.” The region’s past and its present have been greatly shaped by the collapse and loss of worlds as well as the forging of a profoundly new world. The peoples of the region have had to think themselves anew through such concepts as creolization, Latinidad and mestizaje, concepts (among others) that describe the processes and strategies used to weather the crises of existence their worlds produced. This seminar will explore this foundational crisis by examining how performance–whether through actual dramatic pieces or the acting out of national/regional identity through various genres–has been the means by which Caribbean and Latin American artists mediate the catastrophes characterizing the experience of coloniality. Of interest are Caribbean and Latin American writers engaging and creating discourses of creolization, mestizaje, indigeneity, modernity, and coloniality as they articulate the region’s sense of self. We invite papers that draw from various textual and artistic mediums from the region, and encourage those that explore issues of gender and sexuality within expressions and representations of cultural regional/national character. We also invite papers studying the mechanisms of silence and exclusion necessitating regional expressions of self that act out as correctives to occidental omissions. The panel organizers are interested in the silences that continue to surround Haiti and structure thinking (or the lack thereof) concerning Haiti, its revolution and its dual and dueling significations as a sign of unprecedented revolutionary possibility and revolutionary failure. We are also intersted in the silences surrounding creolization’s political viability, whether its promise of organic creation and renewal through local/indigenous forms and practices, and its now predictable performance of difference can continue to offer any true strategy for change. Lastly, we are interested in the turn towards an ideology of indigeneity and indigenous people during times of crisis, ideologies that leave the latter’s experience with colonialism anchored in the past, and their importance in the present limited to epistemologies of erasure. Panel link: http://acla.org/acla2012/?page_id=722
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION:
Please submit papers to: http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php. Proposals should be 250 words and include a title (20 words). You will be asked to include a bio of 50 words when submitting your paper proposal.The paper proposal deadline is November 15th.
All inquiries about the panel should be directed to Natalie M. Léger (Natalie.Palmer@tufts.edu), Armando Garíca (ag358@cornell.edu) and/or Kavita Singh (kas379@cornell.edu).
Painting: Hurricane by VIlaire Rigaud at http://www.haitianarthopkins.com/Riche_Rouanez.htm