Habits and Disruptions in Bureaucratically Correct Mexicanist Scholarship

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Bureaucracy seems at once invisible, a form without meaning in itself, and pervasive: in creative realms, it organizes the process of competing for grants and earning prizes. It also determines the university structure in which academics are trained and train others. David Graeber’s provocative book on bureaucracy, The Utopia of Rules, states hyperbolically that in the last thirty years, scholars in the U.S. failed to produce a major work of social theory (134). This panel aims to study the positioning of Mexican Studies within the US academy. What does this area of study considers valuable? How, in turn, do the writers who have become important within this academy rise to prominence? Brian Gollnick’s work examines the predicament of Hispanic studies in the US academy, and the reasons why it has been granted a subordinate position to other disciplines. Thinking about her own career path, Beth Jörgensen’s presentation traces her unconventional research in Mexican studies, from Elena Poniatowska in the 1980s to disability studies in the present. Emily Hind’s examination of the Mexican literary grant and prize systems helps to explain how figures such as Poniatowska could seem unconventional. Isabel Díaz, finally, reviews examples of women who have not followed this path.

Sub Track

• Interrogating Latin American Studies

Chair

• Rebecca Janzen, Bluffton University

Individual Presentations

• Does the World Exist Outside Bureaucracy? - Ty H West, Saint Mary's College, Indiana

• Breaking the Habit - Beth E Jorgensen, University of Rochester

• Neoliberalización y el inglés imperial en Estados Unidos - Brian L Gollnick, University of Iowa

Discussant

• Manuel Gutiérrez, Rice University