Motion, Medium, Message

February 16, 2024 (Friday)February 17, 2024 (Saturday)

108 ARCH, 3601 Locust Walk

Motion, Medium, Message

Department of Spanish and Portuguese Graduate Conference

To become, displace, flip, withdraw, spin, convey, escape, dance, halt. Movement — or its absence — is experienced everywhere. It finds its carrier, its medium: in migration, in economic activity, in hybrid artistic forms, in the performing arts, in paradigm shifts, in fluctuations of affect. Only then the message is created and reaches its audience. Contemplating this panorama, it is worth asking: what dialogues are produced in this conduit of movement, medium, and message in diverse Hispanic-Lusophone-Caribbean theories and cultural products in a global context?

Postgraduate scholars share their research in a series of talks and moderated discussions. Conference keynote speakers are Edmundo Paz Soldán (Professor of Latin American Literature, Cornell University) and Zeb Tortorici (Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, NYU). 

 

Presented by Penn's Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Cosponsored by the Wolf Humanities Center.


Conference Schedule

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16

3:00 pm–3:50 pm
Registration

 

3:50 pm–4:00 pm
Welcoming and Opening Remarks

 

4:00 pm–5:30 pm
Panel 1. The Human Message
Moderator: Alexis Hernando

  1. Cesar Ruiz Ledesma, University of Pittsburgh
    Posthumanismo crítico en los Andes: los casos de Gamaliel Churata y Manuel Scorza

  2. María Alexandra Arana Blas, University of Pittsburgh
    La contradicción de ser tusán: migración y minorías modelo en la literatura de Celia Wu

  3. Ana María Alejos Ríos, Northwestern University
    Proletariado y mass medias: Vanguardismo político en ¡Quiero trabajo! de María Luisa Carnelli

  4. Rhiannon Clarke, Johns Hopkins
    “Hay que pensar en el teatro del porvenir”: The Performative Text of Lorca’s Viaje a la luna and El público

 

5:30 pm–6:00 pm
Break

 

6:00 pm–7:15 pm
Keynote Presentation: Edmundo Paz-Soldán (Cornell University)

 

7:15 pm–8:00 pm
Reception Dinner


SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17

9:00 am–10:00 am
Registration and breakfast

 

10:00 am–11:30 am
Panel 2. Filmic Medium and Message
Moderator: Armando Navarro Rojas

  1. Bárbara Pérez Curiel, New York University
    The Mexican Revolution is Dead, Long live the Mexican Revolution! Documentary and Hegemony in Mexico, 1934-1940

  2. Oscar Zapata García, University of Pittsburgh
    “Roma” y la estética del fracaso del proyecto nacional

  3. Clara Jimenez, University of Pennsylvania
    Unsettling the Domestic, Labor in Flux: Examining Cuarón’s Roma and Women’s Domestic Work in Mexico City

  4. Simone Cavalcante, University of Pennsylvania
    Navigating Identity and Belonging: Queer Narratives in Futuro Beach/Praia do Futuro (Brazil, 2015)

 

11:45 am–1:15 pm
Panel 3. Political and Authorial Movements
Moderator: Erik Alonso

  1. Jancarlos Montoya-Mejía, University of Pennsylvania
    Language ideologies made visible through self-reflection: Spanish speakers in the United States

  2. Teresita Goyeneche, CUNY Graduate Center
    Retos al status quo: de Santos a Petro, la transgresión al estilo político en la Colombia contemporánea

  3. Andoni Perez-Lopez, University of Pennsylvania
    Educación racionalista y pedagogía revolucionaria: La labor de Mella y Ferrer i Guàrdia

  4. Marian Nozaleda, SUNY Stony Brook
    The failure of Spanish idealism in La desheredada, by Benito Pérez Galdós

 

1:15 pm–2:00 pm
Lunch

 

2:00 pm–3:30 pm
Panel 4. Movement in Identity
Moderator: Astrid Lopez Mendez

  1. Yasmin Murray, Brown University
    Locating Rita Indiana’s La mucama de Omicunlé (2015): intergenerational trauma and sex work in the Dominican Republic’s coastal town of Sosúa

  2. Estef Calderón, Boston University
    Abortar y renacer en Vientrx: La (trans)formación de la identidad a través de los seudónimos

  3. María Torres Colón, University of Pittsburgh
    Cuerpo, espacio y escritura en Esta parcela de Guadalupe Santa Cruz

  4. Angelina Coronado, Columbia University
    “I never had any masters other than my books”: On Black & Afro-descendant Bibliographers in Saint-Domingue and early Haiti (1797 - 1820)

3:45 pm–5:00 pm
Keynote Presentation - Zeb Tortorici (New York University)

 

6:00 pm
Reception Dinner


Presented by Penn's Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Cosponsored by the Wolf Humanities Center.