The “Afro-Latinx Stories” panel is scheduled as a Special session for the 2021 MLA convention, which will be held entirely online!
The panel will be held on Thursday, January 7, 2020, from 1:45 PM-3:00 PM EST and is co-sponsored by MLA’s LLC Latina and Latino (G100) Forum and the LLC African American Forum.
Check out the complete panel abstract, presenters, and presentation abstracts here: https://elenamachado.blogs.bucknell.edu/mla2021-afro-latinx-stories/
Panel Abstract: “Afro-Latinx Stories” analyzes Afro-Latinx cultural and literary production. The panel emphasizes the centrality of African diasporic experiences to the formation of Latinidad, while foregrounding the stories that Afro-Latinx people tell about themselves, in their own voices. The privileging of mestizaje and a regime of antiblackness have often led the field of US Latinx Studies to marginalize the creative work of Afro-Latinx people. Literary criticism on US Latinx creative writing has tended to gloss over intra-ethnic racial dynamics to focus on how contemporary texts depict racialization within the United States. In contrast, this panel centers the work of Afro-Latinx writers and artists in order to critique the homogenizing logic of pan-Latinidad. This panel strives to highlight the various historical contexts relevant to situating Afro-Latinx creativity: Civil Rights era art movements, African American literary traditions, scientific technologies such as DNA testing, religious practices, and climate change.