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My residency at the National Humanities Center began in September and I am simply astounded by the resources available for fellows. The librarians on staff are amazing: they have obtained all the books I need for my research as well as archival materials that I thought were completely out of reach.

During my first couple of weeks, I listened to my fellow fellows describe their research projects and drafted some points of dialogue, a shared vocabulary that might enrich our individual projects: power dynamics, ownership/authority & cultural capital, racial hierarchy/racism, performance, embodiment, memory of resistance & absence/silence/gaps, witness/redress, postcoloniality, decolonization, institutions, hunger for representation, longing for social justice, spatial politics, relationship between art and audience, challenging mainstream discourses, canonization, proximity to white power, and market popularity.

I know that I think best in the company of others so I am very much looking forward to listening and learning from my colleagues during our lunchtime conversations and project workshops.

My chapter, “Hype it Up: US Latinx Theater on TikTok,” appears in the just published TikTok Cultures in the United States collection, edited by Trevor Buffone. The book focuses on “the role of TikTok in US popular culture, paying close attention to the app’s growing body of subcultures.” Use discount code ADC22 for 30% off when you purchase your own copy from Routledge here.

As platforms like TikTok emerge, there is much to learn about the many people and ideas it gives voice to, as well as silences and suppresses. Boffone has given us a must-read collection for those working to make the pressing issues of internet culture and community legible. This work further expands the urgent need for a disciplinary field of internet studies as digital media platforms are remaking our worlds.
Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression

I’ve been fortunate enough to be awarded John G. Medlin, Jr. Fellowship by the National Humanities Center, which means I’ll be in residence there for the 2022-2023 academic year.

I’ll be working on my research project, “Staging Activism in US Latinx Theater,” and enjoying the support provided by the National Humanities Center, which includes a fellowship stipend, library services, a private office, common hour meals, and a wonderful community of over 30+ fellows. Learn more about the class of 2022–23 and their projects below:

The students of ENLS 213, Cuban-American, literature welcomed Vanessa Garcia to their class via Zoom. Garcia discussed her play, “The Cuban Spring” (2014), talked about her writing and research process, and shared her journey from the visual arts to theater.

My essay, “Hype it Up: US Latinx Theater on TikTok,” will be appearing in the forthcoming, TikTok Cultures in the US, edited by Trevor Buffone.

The hardcover version is already available for pre-order, so check that out here as well as other titles published as part of the Routledge Focus on Digital Media and Culture Series.

This is my final term as chair of the LLC Latina/Latino Forum, so I’m looking forward to attending the virtual panels we are hosting at the 2022 MLA Convention!

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Thursday, 6 January 2022, 7:00 PM – 8:15 PM

Session 163 Democracy and the Latinx Novel

Presider: Alberto Varón

Recent events have demonstrated the simultaneous vulnerability and resiliency of democratic projects and of our need for cultural frameworks for imagining the norms and processes of those institutions. Panelists address the relation between democracy and the novel across historical, linguistic, and ethnic ranges and discuss the novel form’s ability to imagine a more just democratic society.

Panelists: José de la Garza Valenzuela , G.R. Andrés Guzmán, Carmen Lamas, Carlos Alonso Nugent, Kristy L. Ulibarri

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Friday, 7 January 2022, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM 

Session 331V Performing Borders / Performances on the Border

Presider: Marion Christina Rohrleitner

Presentations:

“Crossing Geographies: Guadalupe Maravilla’s Utopian Gestures,” Amanda Macedo Macedo, Brown U

“Gloria Anzaldúa and María Cristina Mena’s Brown Performances,” Renee Hudson, Chapman U

“Like a Puzzle: Fragmentation, Horror, and the Grotesque on the United States–Mexico Border,” Maia Gil’Adí, U of Massachusetts, Lowell

“Cenicienta: A Bilingual Rasquache Performance to Promote Access and Representation,” Adriana Dominguez, U of Texas, El Paso

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Executive Committee Members

• Carmen Lamas, Jan. 2022
• Elena Machado Sáez, Jan. 2023 (2021–Jan. 2022 Ch.)
• Marion Christina Rohrleitner, Jan. 2024 (2021–Jan. 2022 Sec.)
• Joshua Javier Gúzman, Jan. 2025
• Alberto Varon, Jan. 2026

On Monday, December 13, 2021, The Latinx Project held a feature of NYU Press books on Latinx Studies; including Jesica S. Fernández, author of Growing Up Latinx: Coming of Age in a Time of Contested Citizenship; Mary Beltran, author of the forthcoming Latino TV: A History; and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas and Mérida M. Rúa, authors of Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies.

My essay, “In pursuit of property and forgiveness: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and In the Heights,” appears in Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies. The collection “offers a multidisciplinary, social-science oriented perspective on Latinx studies, including the social histories and contemporary lives of a diverse range of Latina and Latino populations.”

Kaiama Glover‘s A regarded self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being (Duke UP, 2021) cites chapter 3, “Writing the Reader: Literacy and Contradictory Pedagogies in Julia Alvarez, Michelle Cliff, and Marlon James” from my book, Market Aesthetics: The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction (UVA Press 2015).

My essay, “In pursuit of property and forgiveness: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and In the Heights” appears in Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies (2021) from NYU Press and edited by Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas and Mérida M. Rúa.

I’m honored to have my work appear alongside that of Suzanne Oboler, Maritza Cárdenas, Pedro Cabán, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Lisa Marie Cacho, Frances R. Aparicio, Lorgia Garcia Peña, and many others.

Description of Collection: This groundbreaking work offers a multidisciplinary, social-science oriented perspective on Latinx studies, including the social histories and contemporary lives of a diverse range of Latina and Latino populations. Editors Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas and Mérida M. Rúa have crafted an anthology that is unique in both form and content. The book combines previously published canonical pieces with original, cutting-edge works created for this volume. The sections of the text are arranged thematically as critical dialogues, each with a brief preface that provides context and a conceptual direction for the scholarly conversation that ensues.

The editors frame the volume around the “humanistic social sciences,” using the term to highlight the historical and social contexts under which expressive cultural forms and archival records are created.

Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies masterfully sheds light on the diversity and complexity of the everyday lives of Latinx populations, the political economic structures that shape enduring racialization and cultural stereotyping, and the continuing efforts to carve out new lives as diasporic, transnational, global, and colonial subjects.

I was recently awarded Bucknell’s John P. Crozer Chair of English Literature, which “honors a faculty member known for outstanding scholarship.” This endowed position begins on August 1, 2021 and provides $5,000 annually for five years. The annual research funds will support my research project on “Staging Activism in US Latinx Theater.”

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