Latin Americanism: The First 1,000 Years

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

How do “classic” works from Latin Americanism from 50 years ago read today? This panel takes up LASA’s invitation to “look back” on the occasion of its 50th anniversary by addressing earlier interventions in the field that have seemingly become archival. Each scholar will address one key work from a central figure in our field and will interpret it in light of contemporary intellectual concerns. Yet far from invoking such names and texts as part of a compulsive scholarly enterprise (a vaunted “responsibility” to the archive) or as an homage to the great figures that formed our field, ours will be an experiment in continuing to think with our past in order to project its futures.

Sub Track

• Literary Studies: Contemporary

Session Organizer

• Samuel A Steinberg, University of Southern California

Chair

• Abraham Acosta, University of Arizona

Individual Presentations

• Jean Franco and the Impossibility of Latin American Secular Literature - Ximena M Briceño Battistini, Stanford University

• Roberto Schwarz, Machado de Assis, and the Economies of Literature - Pedro R Erber, Cornell University

• New Materialism Avant la Lettre? Reassessing Fernando Ortiz's transculturación - Héctor M Hoyos Ayala, Stanford University

• The Order of Reading: Rama in Perspective - Samuel A Steinberg, University of Southern California

Discussant

• Ivonne Del Valle, University of California/Berkeley