January 15, 2008                                                                          

AMU Home - Debra A. Castillo



 
Debra A. Castillo (Cornell University)

Occupied Aztlán:
Chicanos/as in America

wtorek, 15 stycznia 2008, godz. 17.3o, sala 118,
Instytut Historii UAM, ul. Sw. Marcin 78, Poznan

 

Abstract: Latinos are the second largest ethnic group (after non-Hispanic Caucasians) in the United States, and the country is poised to become in the near future the second largest Spanish speaking country in the world, after Mexico. A recent NY Times article cited the population at 47 million Latinos/as in the USA, and this number does not include the 3.8 million US citizens who are residents of Puerto Rico. These astonishingly high numbers ground arguments like those of Juan Gonzalez when he writes trenchantly, "this demographic shift is so massive it is transforming the ethnic composition of this country and challenging key aspects of its accepted national identity, language, culture, and official history, a seismic social change that caught the power structures and institutions of US society unprepared." This talk will focus on a single thread of this immense field of study - the recuperation and uses of a mythic indigenous past in key texts from the Mexican-American thinkers. I will begin with general demographic comments about Latino/as in the USA, then go back to the formative moments in the l960s, making reference to classic texts like the Chicano Manifesto, El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, and Borderlands/La Frontera. Excerpts from a pair of poems, a clip from the film "Zoot Suit", and discussion of Valdez-Rodriguez's recent bestselling novel will conclude the discussion.


 

pozostale wystapienia Debry A. Castillo w Instytucie Filologii Angielskiej UAM


Debra A. Castillo is Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow and Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. She specializes in contemporary narrative from the Spanish-speaking world (including the USA), gender studies, and cultural theory.  She is author or editor of ten books, including Talking Back: Strategies for a Latin American Feminist Literary Criticism (l992), Easy Women: Sex and Gender in Modern Mexican Fiction (l998), and (cowritten with María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba)  Border Women:  Writing from La Frontera (2002). Her most recent book is Re-dreaming America: Toward a Bilingual Understanding of American Literature (SUNY, 2004).

info:  Ewa Domanska, IH UAM, tel.: (0-61) 829 4766; email: ewa@amu.edu.pl