CALL FOR PAPERS
A panel titled "Voices and Images of Latina Women in Diaspora" scheduled
for the March 30,31 Northeast Modern Language Association Conference to
be held in Hartford, Connecticut. The panel abstract as it will appear
in the summer newsletter is as follows:
Issues and problems in representations of and by Latina women. How
gender, identity, memory, history, literary production, race, class, and
border politics shape and transform Latina writing and subjectivity.
The extended panel proposal as accepted by the conference is:
This panel will begin from the assumption that Latina subjectivity
operates on a fluid and dynamic continuum—it takes a variety
of forms, engages new methods of communication and embraces
contradictions. Implicit in this assumption is the idea that
several forces must then converge to shape this changing subjectivity.
Papers on this panel will address the issues of how
gender, identity, memory, history, literary production, race, class, and
border politics shape and transform Latina writing and
the process of seizing and naming subjectivity.
As a starting point for this panel, I am invoking Ellen McCracken’s
assertion in New Latina Narrative: The Feminine Space of
Postmodern Ethnicity that Latina authors “move between fictive and
autobiographical narrative strategies,” often within the
same work. In doing so, she continues, they “interweave personal and
public history” and thus inhabit both private and public
spheres, “showing the two to be inseparable” (74). As Latina authors
often foreground autobiographical constructs in their
fiction, they invite inquiry into how defining their subjectivity
inherently contradicts poststructuralist assertions that the author
and self are separate and unequal narrative constructs. By
interrogating subjectivity through various issues, the panel will strive
to engage questions of identity relating to this contradiction, as well
as uncovering other areas for inquiry into the Latina literary
production process. Through examining the images of women present in
Latina writing, the panel will also invite further inquiry
into how issues and images concerning the body and representation
contribute to building subjectivity and agency. The panel
will also endeavor to discover new methods and explanations of how
Latina authors foreground subjectivity in their work as
well as gauging its impact on cultural production.
McCracken, Ellen. New Latina Narrative: The Feminine Space of
Postmodern Ethnicity. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 1999.
Submit abstracts or completed papers, and address inquiries to Lisa
Trevino Roy-Davis at krdavis@epix.net by September 15.
You must be a NEMLA member to present, and may join before the
conference date. Information on NEMLA is available at their website:
http://www.anna-maria.edu/nemla.
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or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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