Fall 2022 Events
Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies at a Crossroads: A LELACS Symposium
Saturday, October 29, 9 am-5:30 pm
Keynote speakers: Laura Barbas-Rhoden (Wofford College) and Nicholas R. Jones (Yale University).
Cleyvis Natera'99 on her recent novel Neruda on the Park
October 27, 5:30 pm, The Wyckoff Center
Maps and power: What redistricting in New York Can teach us about political organizing
Randy Abreu'11
Monday, October 24, 7 pm, Emerson Auditorium
Randy Abreu will discuss the recent redistricting, drawing on case studies from US Congressional districts 14 (Bronx/Queens) and 20 (Capital District, including Saratoga County).
Jews and Latinos: Unlikely Partners
A lecture by Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American,
and Latino Culture at Amherst College
Wednesday, October 19, 4:30 pm, Gannett Auditorium
A reception will follow
Ivan Stavans is the Publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of
Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include
How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, Spanglish, Dictionary
Days, The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature, and A Critic’s Journey. He
has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis
Singer: Collected Stories, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among dozens of other volumes.
He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship,
Chile’s Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book
Award. Stavans’s work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage
and screen. A cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, Chicago,
Oxford, and Dublin, he is the host of the NPR podcast "In Contrast."
Welcome Reception
Thursday, October 13, 6-7 pm, Spa Lounge
On Latinidad: Identity and Culture
Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies Fall 2022 Speaker Series
Jomaira Salas Pujols: “Self-Identity or Racial Classification?: How Afro-Latina Girls
Trouble the Myth of Mestizaje”
September 19, 5-6 pm ET, Zoom
Paul Joseph López Oro: “Decolonizing AfroLatinidad: Black Central Americans in the
United States”
September 26, 5-6 pm ET, Zoom
Jonathan Rosa: “Latinx Languages & Identities Beyond Borders”
October 3, 5-6 pm ET, Zoom
“Interrogating Latinidad: A Conversation with Naida Saavedra and Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón”
Thursday, September 15, 5 pm, Wyckoff Center
Dr. Naida Saavedra is a fiction writer interested in telling stories about people and their relationship with chaotic cities. As a scholar, her research focuses on issues of identity, migration, and social media in contemporary Latinx Literature. She is author of Vos no viste que no llorĂ© por vos (2009), Ăšltima inocencia (2013), Hábitat (2013), Vestier y otras miserias (2015), and Desordenadas (2019). In 2020, she published #NewLatinoBoom: CartografĂa de la narrativa en español de EE.UU., a study of 21st-century literary writing in Spanish in the USA. She currently works as an Associate Professor of Spanish at Worcester State University.
Dr. Sergio GutiĂ©rrez NegrĂłn is a writer as well as a scholar of 19th-century Latin American intellectual history and 20th-century Mexican and Caribbean literatures. He is author of the novels Los dĂas hábiles (2020), Dicen que los dormidos (2014), and Palacio (2011), and the short-story collection Preciosos perdedores (2019). In 2017 he was selected as part of the Hay Festival’s Bogota 39, a list of the 39 best Latin American writers under 39. His scholarly monograph, Mexico, Interrupted: Labor, Idleness, and the Economic Imaginary of Independence, will be published in June 2023 by Vanderbilt University Press. He currently works as an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Oberlin College.
