Aztlán Meets Piazzale Loreto: Chicanx Studies and What Comes After Neoliberalism (HYBRID)

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Roundtable Format

Abstract

The mid to late 1960s witnessed the implementation of two antagonistic political ideologies: Mexican American studies and, as a response to Barry Goldwater’s failed presidential campaign, neoliberalism. If throughout its history Chicanx Studies has primarily had to contend with the consolidation and global hegemony of neoliberalism, how can it shift to adequately contend with the (re)emerging paradigm of fascism under the Trump administration–a (re)emergence that will no doubt have political and cultural repercussions past our lifetimes even if the semblance of “democratic” U.S. presidential elections remains in place?

Opening with our personal experiences as faculty members as an entry point to address the larger conceptual and ideological implications of this political moment for the field, this intergenerational roundtable aims to unpack Chicanx Studies’ position vis-à-vis the nation state and populism through conversation and commentary by junior, mid-career, and senior Chicanx Studies scholars. Each participant will respond to 1) the forms and impacts of facism in/on their respective institutions, research, and pedagogy, 2) how these experiences challenge Chicanx Studies to rethink the paradigm of neoliberalism on which their training and understanding of the U.S. political terrain has primarily rested, and 3) possible new directions for reimagining intellectual and political possibilities for the field.

By understanding Chicanx Studies as currently inhabiting a moment of critical reflection and possible reorientation, this roundtable proposes Chicanx Studies as a crucial case study for thinking through the ways in which Ethnic Studies and American Studies are potentially tethered to a neoliberal paradigm, which would inevitably color even their forms of critical inquiry.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Magda Garcia, University of California Riverside

Panelists

• Roberto Macias, University of California-Riverside

• Sara A. Ramírez, Texas State University

• Magda Garcia, University of California Riverside

Virtual Accommodation Panelist

• Norma Alarcón, University of California-Berkeley

Comment

• Richard T Rodriguez, University of California-Riverrside

Biographical Information

Norma Alarcón is a noted Chicana theorist and scholar. She is Professor Emerita of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley. She received her doctorate in Latin American Literature and Culture from Indiana University. Her path breaking essays shaped Chicana Studies and paved the way for contemporary theories of Chicana subjectivity. She was the founder and publisher of the influential Third Woman Press, which began as the journal Third Woman in 1979. Third Woman Press published major texts and important writers in Chicana and Latina Studies, including Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Cherríe Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldúa. Its more than 30 books and anthologies between 1984 and 2004 include the third edition of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. She taught at Purdue University from 1983 to 1987 and at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1987 until her retirement in 2004. At UC Berkeley, she taught courses in the Chicano, Ethnic Studies, Spanish, and Women's Studies departments.

Magda García is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Riverside, where she is working on her manuscript, “Claiming La Bruja: Rage, the Speculative, and Contemporary Border Tejanx Feminist Affects.” Her publications include “‘my mother, my longest lover’: Cripping South Texas in Noemi Martinez’s The South Texas Experience Zine Project (2005) and South Texas Experience: Love Letters (2015),” in Crip Genealogies (Duke UP, 2023), edited by Mel Chen, Alison Kafer, Eunjung Kim, and Julie Avril Minich and a co-edited collection, Transmovimientos: Latinx Queer Migrations, Bodies, and Spaces (University of Nebraska Press, 2021).

Roberto Macias Jr. is an Acting-Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Riverside. He specializes in Latinx literature and cultural theory, Critical Masculinity Studies, and 20th century Continental Philosophy. His publications include a co-curated special double-dossier in Fall 2023 and Spring 2023 on global latinidades for Aztlán: A Journal of Chicana/o Studies, which features his article on the defunct hip hop group Das Racist titled, “‘What Has Brown Done for Me Lately?’: The (Im)possibilities of Recuperating Brownness after 9/11.”

Sara A. Ramírez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Texas State University, where she teaches courses on Chicanx literature and Anzaldúan Thought. She is overall committed to the preservation and promotion of Chicana feminist arts. Her publications include “‘Hay Que Inventarnos/We Must Invent Ourselves’: The Impact of Alarcón and Cisneros’s Friendship on Chicana Feminist Literature” in ¡Ay Tú!: Critical Essays on the Work and Career of Sandra Cisneros (University of Texas Press, 2024), edited by Geneva Gano and Sonia Saldívar-Hull, “Making (Sense of) Place: Sandra Cisneros’s Literary Arts Activism in the Midwest” in American Studies 2024, and “Publishing Work that Matters: Third Woman Press and its Impact on Chicana and Latina Publishing” with Norma E. Cantú in Diálogo 2017.

Commentator/moderator: Richard T. Rodríguez is Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He specializes in Latina/o/x literary and cultural studies, film and visual culture, and gender and sexuality studies, and holds additional interests in transnational cultural studies, labor studies, popular music studies, and comparative ethnic studies. He taught for several years at Cal State LA and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign before joining the UC Riverside faculty in 2016. The author of Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 2009), which won the 2011 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Book Award, and A Kiss across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and U.S. Latinidad (Duke University Press, 2022), he is currently completing Undocumented Desires: Fantasies of Latino Male Sexuality. A former editor of the Moving Image Review section of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, he serves on the editorial boards of American Literary History, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Latino Studies, and InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture. In addition, he currently serves on the PMLA Advisory Committee. The 2019 recipient of the Richard A. Yarborough Mentoring Award, granted by the Minority Scholars' Committee of the American Studies Association, he is the co-principal investigator on a University of California MRPI grant titled "The Global Latinidades Project: Globalizing Latinx Studies for the Next Millennium."