Masculinity & Femininity in Colonial Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel reflects an orientation that popular culture, along with traditional literature, constructs powerful narratives that normalize gender identities from colonialist dispositions. Collectively, this panel focuses on texts (music, film, and literature) that have migrated—as interlopers and welcomed guests—from one country to the next. By analyzing Alejo Carpentier’s Kingdom of this World, Speaker 1 seeks to demonstrate how Neobaroque literature (consciously or unconsciously) emphasizes a break with femininity and represents colonization as inherently gendered. Speaker 2 conducts a rhetorical analysis on the narcocorrido, a musical subgenre of the corrido that involves and glorifies drug trafficking and violence, to explore the complicated depiction of a culture of masculinity that affects women and men alike. Speaker 3 examines how Mexican directors utilize thematic techniques to reproduce, or subvert, colonial gender identities. Lastly, Speaker 4 investigates depictions of state-sanctioned violence in fictional accounts coming from Latinx and Caribbean authors. The panel suggests gendered representations can inform the ways in which human beings navigate social institutions. By employing a variety of critical techniques in an interdisciplinary context, we hope to better understand how texts engage with a legacy of problematic colonial narratives.

Sub Track

• Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Approaches

Session Organizer

• Jose Luis Cano

Chair

• Zachary R Hernandez, Texas Tech University

Individual Presentations

• Neobaroque Literature and the En/Gendering of Colonial Resistance - Sylvia A Garcia, University of Houston

• Masculinity in Narcocorridos: A Rhetorical Analysis - Jose Luis Cano

• Exploring Masculinity in Popular Mexican Film - Zachary R Hernandez, Texas Tech University

• Parsing Gender Violence in Latinx and Caribbean Fiction - Kenna Neitch, Texas Tech University