Adrienne Adams
Research
Their larger research project traces the production and circulation of print and audiovisual materials among black diasporic queer/trans erotic information networks in the late 20th century. Their summer research in part queries the extent to which these materials circulated within the context of Afro-Mexican and other Spanish Caribbean contexts.
Summer plans
Digging into the archive!
Inger Flem Soto
Research
I’m broadly interested in issues of sexual difference, continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, and Latin American feminist thought. My dissertation will focus on the mother figure in Chilean works of literature and philosophy, paying attention not to representations of mothering as such, but instead engaging with this figure at a theoretical level as a place of contestation of phallogocentric intellectual production. The research will explore how the figure of the mother has, explicitly or not, appeared in Chilean works as a force of difference that puts pressure on notions of institutionality, identity, origin, and language.
Summer plans
I look forward to traveling to Chile to carry out research in their National Archive and Library. There I will delve into the work of anti-dictatorial feminist Julieta Kirkwood, and poet Gabriela Mistral, both of which have an important place in my dissertation.
Noraedén Mora Méndez
Research
My dissertation “Untimely Passages: Experiments in Venezuelan Literary and Visual Culture”—initiates a conversation about the inside and outside of chronicity, cartographies, and disciplines. Through experimental art, I work on the possibility of bringing together techniques and practices from different disciplines to open passages between different artistic and cultural borders in Venezuela and beyond.
Summer plans
I will present a small section of my first chapter related to the notion of crisis in a conference in Madrid. I look forward to hearing Denise Ferreira Da Silva’s lecture and receiving feedback from amazing scholars attending the Seminario Crítico-Político Trasnacional at Universidad Complutense.
Ifetayo Olutosin
Research
My research project, currently titled Quotidian Beauty and Political Acts of Black Joy: 21st Century Latin American Afro-Descendant Film, explores the politics of Black joy in 21st century Afro-Latin American films and how these movies both refuse and create narrative depictions of blackness in Latin American cinema. My current objects of study are films from Mexico, Colombia and Brazil that include either an entire cast of Afro-Descendants and/or are produced or directed by an Afro-Descendant filmmaker. One of my larger goals with this project is to demonstrate that Black Latin American cultural productions are not solely created to juxtapose whiteness, and that there is beauty and power in the everyday practices of life that they choose to depict.
Summer plans
This summer, I look forward to editing my first chapter and beginning to work on my second! I am also excited for all of the musical programming occurring at the Hollywood Bowl and for it to be sunny in LA for more than four days 🙂
Glenda Palacios Quejada
Research
The analysis of racial biases in academic contexts is crucial because teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors rooted in their biases have potential negative consequences for some students. However, Latin America generally suffers from a lack of research addressing racial biases. This dearth of scholarship is primarily explained by the inaccurate view of Latin America as a region free of racism. This study examines two main questions: a) How do teachers’ implicit racial White/Black biases vary across the Americas?, and b) Do non-Black teachers from Latin America have higher implicit racial White/Black biases than non-Black teachers from the US?
Summer plans
During this summer, I am going to conduct interviews with teachers in Colombia, in order to identify some potential mechanics associated with racism and racial bias.
Laura Roque
Research
My project, Neither/Nor: The Cuban-American Exilic State of Unreality, explores memory, identity, and a (sub)culture born in exile. Cuba Before Castro is idealized by most exiles, although there was nothing idyllic about the installed dictator who preceded him. My project explores reconfigurations of an imagined Cuban past, using overlooked but vital Cuban-American cultural production as primary texts, such as 1970s bilingual sitcom ¿Qué Pasa U.S.A?. Using these texts, Neither/Nor will also explore the psychological impossibility of being from somewhere one has truly never lived, experienced by exiles who came as children and the children of exiles living in immigrant communities.
Summer plans
This summer, I’m looking forward to pool days, having time to research and write, and some international and domestic travel.
