Queering Latina Cultures conference

Weekend conference explores sexual preference, ethnicity in Latina culture

Cornell's Latino Studies Program (LSP) will host a gathering of scholars for a conference titled, "Queering Latina Cultures," this Friday, Feb. 27, and Saturday, Feb. 28, in 258 Goldwin Smith Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

"The conference provides one of the first, if not the first, opportunity for extraordinarily innovative scholars to discuss studies in contemporary queer Latina cultures," said Mary Pat Brady, LSP director. "These are scholars who challenge the unarticulated Anglo focus of queer theory and the heterosexual focus of much Latino studies."

The conference will investigate what Brady describes as "the history of racialization" in queer theory, which has left the once progressive area of study "at an intellectual impasse," she said.

The conference begins Friday at 1 p.m. with opening remarks by Cornell Provost Biddy Martin, followed by keynote speaker Juana Maria Rodriguez, associate professor of women's studies at the University of California-Davis.

Rodriguez is author of Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces, a study analyzing cultural events, literary and theoretical texts and language.

Below is an outline of panel topics, presenters and lectures. For a complete schedule, contact Marti Dense at the LSP offices, 255-3197, e-mail mfd1@cornell.edu or visit this Web site: http://latino.lsp.cornell.edu/.

Friday, Feb. 27:

1-2:30 p.m.:Opening remarks and keynote address, Juana Maria Rodriquez, "Of Chichis, Chochas and Chachas: Queer latina Bodies in Scholarship."

2:45-4:30 p.m.:Panel 1 -- Queer Cultural Imaginaries
Speakers: Sergio de la Mora, University of California-Davis, "Mexican Abjection: Luchas Reyes, Rancheras and National Homoerotic Imaginary"; Catriona Esquibel, Ohio State University, "Heresies of Queer Latinidad."

8 p.m.:Public reading by author tatiana de la tierra, SUNY Buffalo, author of For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology (Para las duras: Una fenomenologia lesbiana).

Saturday, Feb. 28:

9-10:30 a.m.:Panel 2 -- Narrating/Queering
Speakers: Dara E. Goldman, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, "Looking Like a Lesbian Narrative: Toward a Queer Latina Poetics"; Sandra K. Soto, University of Arizona, "Reading Like a Queer: On Moraga's Memoirs, Manifestoes, and Motherhood."

10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.:Panel 3 -- In Search of a Queer Diaspora
Speakers: Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, "Macha's World: E;izabeth Marrero Performs the Queer Puerto Rican Bronx"; Licia Fiol-Mattam, CUNY-Lehman College, "Truth Tales; Nation, Gender, Sexuality and Diaspora in Achy Obejas, Days of Awe."

1:30-3:30 p.m.:Panel 3 -- How to Think Queer: Philosophies of Desire
Speakers: Calvo Haimes Garcia, SUNY-Binghamton, "Peregrinas y Callejeras/Pilgrims & Streetwalkers: Maria Lugones's Tactical Strategies of Resistance"; Luz Calvo, Ohio State University," "We Love You, Tania: Curious Circuits of Queer Desire"; tatiana de la tierra, SUNY Buffalo: "esto no tiene nombre and conmoción: Latina Lesbian Publishing in Action."

3:30-5 p.m.: Roundtable discussion with participants and audience; reception follows.

February 26, 2004