Go, go, go, Chica-go! 2019 started with a quick but adventure-packed trip to Chicago to perform at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Jan 4), as well as participate in a roundtable discussion at MLA (Jan 5), and have the most decadent vegan feast at Matthew Kenny’s Althea (to celebrate my birthday in style! but that’s another story) so, first things first:
On Jan 4, I was invited to present some new work at Natural Language, an electronic literature event organized in conjunction with the 2019 MLA conference, the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) and the Art & Technology Studies (ATS) department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The lineup included truly remarkable artists such as Eduardo Kac, Wambli Gamache or Stephanie Strickland, combining performative pieces and literary readings. It really was an amazing experience full of diverse performances and different approaches to electronic literature, with Dene Grigar and Judd Morrissey as emcees (who also performed beautifully!!)
I read my poem-essay “As We May Think”, a bilingual online video essay on representational digital media and their asynchronous relation with the way we think and see the world. It’s part of my larger #YouTubers poetic series, where I explore early confessional videos and today’s influencers’ speech, seeing the corporate online video giant in terms of web visibility and discourse. Here is the essay in slide form>
On Jan 5, I participated in Digital Hispanisms, the best roundtable I have been part of at MLA (I am not exaggerating, the quality of the interventions was breathtaking). Organized by Élika Ortega as part of the TC Digital Humanities MLA forum, this roundtable aimed to spark a conversation on the intersections between Digital Humanities (DH) and Hispanic Studies (HS). An important talk since, as the event’s description reads, “[w]hile most often housed in English and History departments in the US, DH has gained prominence in Modern Languages Departments (or departments of similar denomination) and, particularly, within HS programs. The opening of tenure lines and postdoctoral positions, as well as the proliferation of theses that bridge HS and DH in recent years are evidence of this.”
I had the honor of opening the discussion with a pedagogical approach to electronic literature in Spanish Literature classrooms. Following Johanna Drucker’s call to understand DH as practice, I proposed that the practical engagement with electronic literature addresses humanistic and literary concerns, as it develops skills related to digital literacies. I suggested as well that learning competencies over content offers skills that are transferable to other fields, much like learning a foreign language and looks at the implementation of “creativity” as an integral competence to “critical thinking” that reinforces the importance of foreign language methodologies in DH and Spanish Literature programs. [This talk is part of a larger project I am working on for a co-edited book with Scott Rettberg on DH and e-lit, email me if you’d like to know more or want the full talk].
Sylvia Fernández (University of Houston) continued with her project Borderlands Archives Cartography (BAC) . Fernández proposes BAC as a form of resistance to the constant and toxic political discursivity that has imposed negative stereotypes and accusations against the Mexico-U.S. border region and its communities.
Nora Benedict (Princeton University) followed by arguing that the long-standing language-centered model of Hispanism has often isolated the field of study from other research areas. Her digital project, “Global Networks of Cultural Production”, details a complex web of intellectuals, both inside and outside of Latin America, as they relate to one publishing enterprise: Victoria Ocampo’s literary journal Sur and her publishing house of the same name. Check out her other amazing “Mapping Borges” project to learn more!
Next, Lorena Gauthereau (University of Houston) discussed her project, “Are We Good Neighbors?” which uses archival letters from the Alonso S. Perales Collection at Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage. These letters, written to Perales, describe personal accounts of discrimination against Mexican Americans, and reveal the personal and normalized embodiment of racism in the United States.
Finally, Élika Ortega’s (Northeastern University) talk took the concept of hybridity long studied by Latin Americanists to question the tropes of the death of the book and media supersession. Ortega intervenes the well established cannon of media studies, largely originating in the Global North with the debates about cultural hybridity in Latin America. Read more on Élika’s “Binding Media” here.
As if these amazing talks were not enough, we also had the privilege of counting on Hilda Chacón (Nazareth College) as our respondent, whose pioneering work and long experience in the field gave all of us something to aspire to!
Sadly, Vanessa Ceia (McGill University) was not able to come to the talk. She was supposed to discuss her “Mapping la movida” project.
And, well, then, yes, happy birthday to me!
