Latinx Studies

A Section of the Latin American Studies Association

Section Annual Reports

Latinx Studies Business Meeting

LASA Congress 2022, Virtual

Unfortunately, during our business meeting there was only one person in attendance (outside of the section board). We believe this was due to congress taking place during Pacific Standard Time (making the business meeting difficult to attend for those in the east coast) and the confusion of the program.

The Board went ahead with our scheduled agenda. Maia Gil’Adí, co-chair of the section, offered a welcome to the business meeting and proposed agenda:

I. Introduction of Current Board officers:

• Co-chair: Maia Gil’Adí, Assistant Professor of Latinx Literature at UMass Boston

• Co-chair: Jessica Retis, Professor and Director of Bilingual Journalism, School of Journalism, University of Arizona

• Secretary: Gretchen Selcke, Assistant Director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at Vanderbilt University

• Graduate Student Representative: Eric Macias, PhD Candidate in the Latin American, Caribbean, and Latina/o Studies Department at the University of Albany (SUNY)

II. What the board accomplished this year:

• Organized three panels for LASA 2022 Congress

  • Maia Gil’Adí promoted the last sponsored panel (Saturday 10 AM PT/1:00 PM ET)

• Changed name from Latino Studies to Latinx Studies

  • Maia thanked section subcommittee Margarita Lopez Maya for taking this to the Executive Council

• Organized section awards: two awards this year (Book and Dissertation) for $500 each

  • This year the board prioritized books by first-time authors and graduate student work

• Opened to questions or comments from members

III. Introduction of Incoming Board

Chair: Gretchen Selcke, Assistant Director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at Vanderbilt University

Secretary: Maria Puerta Riera, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Valencia College

Graduate Student Representative: Gisabel Leonardo, Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

IV. What the board wishes to accomplish in the coming year:

• Gretchen, the incoming chair:

  • Co-sponsor reception and panels with journals like Latino Studies
  • Co-sponsor panels with Latinx track and other sections of LASA
  • Promote funding resources for graduate students and post-docs
V. Overview of Section Chairs Meetings (04-05)

• Over 700 members of LASA – 2112 members of the organization are section members (34% of membership)

• First time sections have representation in front of Executive Council (non-voting)

  • Representatives: Aida Hernandez; Beatriz Padilla

• Section chairs are seeking amendments to LASA constitution—voting rights in Executive Council

• Concern over membership fees and congress registration

• Cultural center in Pittsburg and print magazine

VI. Membership and Budget:

• 126-200 members: 3 guaranteed panels

  • Currently have 192 members

• Section budget: $2943.70

VII. Section Members Accolades and Announcements:

Regina Mills:

  • The publication of the special issue of The Black Scholar called "Post-Soul Afro-Latinidades," (vol. 52, no. 1), that I guest co-edited with Trent Masiki (Amherst College).
  • The article in this issue: "A Post-Soul Spider-Man: The Remixed Heroics of Miles Morales."
  • Acceptance NEH Transnational Dialogues in Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx Studies Summer Institute for Summer 2022 at the University of Pittsburgh.
  • Her book tentatively titled Invisibility and Influence: U.S. AfroLatinidades in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Life Writing is under contract with The University of Texas Press

Nora River:

Sarah Quesada:

  • Started a new position at Duke University this fall, as Assistant Professor of Romance studies, after leaving the University of Notre Dame
  • The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press this summer in the Studies in World Literature and Culture series.

Ricardo Ortiz:

  • Ricardo earned promotion to full professor of US Latinx literature and culture in the English Department at Georgetown University on July 1, 2021
  • January 2022 he was appointed President of the Association of Departments of English.

Ariana Ochoa Camacho:

  • Promoted to Associate Professor beginning the next academic year.

Eric Macias:

  • Dissertation Writing Award Recipient- Social Science Research Council/National Endowment for the Humanities (SSRC/NEH) Sustaining Humanities Infrastructure Program (SHIP), which is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP)
  • 2022-2023 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship—Alternate Recipient
  • 2021-2022 SUNY at Albany-College of Arts and Science Daniel and Wendy J. L. Keyser Teaching Excellence Award
VIII. Prize Winners Announcements:

Dissertation Award Winner: Jorge Ramirez-Lopez, Dartmouth College, “Indigenous Worldmaking in a World of Crisis: Race and the Making of the Migrant Circuit between Southern Mexico and the US/Mexican Pacific Coast, 1968-1994”

• Dissertation Award Committee:

  • Jessica Retis, Professor and Director of Bilingual Journalism, School of Journalism, University of Arizona
  • Eric Macias, PhD Candidate in the Latin American, Caribbean, and Latina/o Studies Department at the University of Albany (SUNY)
  • Veronica Davila Smith, Postdoctoral Fellow in Latin American and Latina/o Studies at Smith College.

• Book Award:

Winner: Carmen Lamas, for her monograph, The Latino Continuum and the Nineteenth-Century Americas: Literature, Translation, and Historiography (Oxford University Press, 2021). Lamas is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and American Studies Program at the University of Virginia. In announcing their choice, the committee wrote that: “Carmen Lamas’ The Latino Continuum offers an important contribution to Latinx literary studies and Latinx studies writ large. Through a focus on the nineteenth-century, Lamas expands the temporal scope of the field of Latinx Studies and helps chart seldom recognized intellectual genealogies. Additionally, Lamas offers us an example of rigorous transnational research as she traces the flow of ideas, writers, and texts throughout the Americas. Lamas’ study advances the field in a sustained manner, underscoring its historical and theoretical roots, flagging crucial interventions, and establishing a temporal and spatial archive that helps define the field. Moreover, though literary analysis primarily informs Lamas’ concept of the “Latino continuum,” we believe that this concept will also influence non-literary and interdisciplinary scholarship. This book is well-researched and beautifully written, serves to ground the discipline, and will shape how scholars approach Latinx studies.”

Honorable Mention: Vanessa Díaz, for her monograph, Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood (Duke University Press, 2020). Díaz is Assistant Professor in Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies Department of Loyola Marymount University. In announcing the award, the committee wrote: “Vanessa Díaz’s Manufacturing Celebrity offers an innovative approach to the field of Latinx studies by highlighting how Hollywood’s machinations lead to the expendability of Latinx lives. In particular, Díaz underscores how ‘ethnoracial, gender, and class realities interact with shifts in the neoliberal global political economy, facilitating the creation of unlikely laborers such as the Latino paparazzi.’ Díaz’s study illuminates a previously unexplored Latinx population, opening important avenues for discussing representations of labor distribution, racial and gender politics, and the production of celebrity. This interdisciplinary ethnography of media production, most importantly, illuminates how corporate cultural products are produced through gendered and racialized labor that occlude the Latinx populations.”

Honorable Mention: Ren Ellis Neyra, for their monograph, The Cry of the Senses: Listening to Latinx and Caribbean Poetics (Duke University Press, 2020). Neyra is Associate Professor at Wesleyan University. In announcing the award, the committee wrote: “Ren Ellis Neyra’s The Cry of the Senses work reframes critical approaches to the Latinx Caribbean, and Puerto Rico in particular, by critiquing what the author terms a ‘strange white ethnonationalism’ that erases the island’s history. With a perceptive Caribbeanist’s ear, Neyra offers a strong case for close reading and close listening. Thinking and listening to the work of Puerto Rican writers and artists, Neyra conceives of Puerto Rico as part of a broader archipelago encompassing the islands of the Caribbean in order to advance different ways of knowing and relationality rooted in Blackness and queerness. Underscoring and critiquing anti-Blackness in Latinx studies and positing the sensorial as a catalyst for solidarity, The Cry of the Senses offers a methodology for close reading and close listening that will expand the field.”

• Book Award Committee:

  • Maia Gil’Adí (Chair), Assistant Professor of English at UMass Lowell
  • Gretchen Selcke, Assistant Director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at Vanderbilt University
  • Johanna Londoño, Associate Professor and Director of LACS Graduate Studies in the Latin American, Caribbean, and US Latino Studies Department at the University of Albany
  • Marisol Lebrón, Associate Professor in Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The LASA Sections Annual Report, 2020-2021

Latino Studies Section Submitted by, Melissa Castillo Planas and Thania Muñoz Davaslioglu, Co-Chairs

Although the COVID-19 global pandemic continued to affect all of us, the Section adapted to the virtual setting in preparation for the LASA 2021 Congress held May 26-29 over zoom. The section sponsored three excellent panels resulting in wonderful discussions and shared scholarship. They were:

Wednesday 5/26, 9 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. ET.: COVID ACROSS BORDERS

This roundtable will feature brief interventions and discussion on how publicly engaged scholars have adapted and developed strategies to stay connected to local/national/international communities as core aspects of research and teaching in response to COVID-19. Topics include activism around immigration issues in Tijuana, women and deportation, community programming in the Bronx, and the challenges of virtual theater. Chair/ Discussant: Jessica M. Retis, University of Arizona Presenters: Melissa Castillo Planas, Lehman College; Maricruz Castro-Ricalde, Tecnológico de Monterrey; Debra Castillo, Cornell University; Robert M. Irwin, University of California/Davis

Wednesday 5/26, 1-2:45 p.m. ET: Afro-Latinidades: Past, Present, Future

Since the 2010 publication of Juan Flores’ and Miriam Jiménez Róman’s Afro-Latin@ Reader, Afro-Latinx studies has solidified and grown as a field. Despite increased attention to Afro-Latinx expressions, Black Latinx continue to be underrepresented in central discussions of Latinidad. This panel invites presentations on the state of the field and the future of Afro-Latinx studies. Chair: Melissa Castillo Planas, Lehman College Presenters: Aris M. Clemons, UT Austin; Anna Lawrence, The University of Texas at Austin; Gretchen Selcke, Vanderbilt University; Ben V. Olguín, University of California, Santa Bárbara

● Friday 5/28, 11 a.m.- 12:45 p.m. ET: What’s in a Name?

“Latinx” has recently become one of the most debatable labels in academic circles and social media platforms. It has brought to the forefront conversations on an array of topics that range from race and gender to issues of generational differences and language diversity. In this panel, we seek to highlight conversations in Latinx Studies that focus on the place of this label in the field beyond the debates: What does the term “Latinx” contribute politically, pedagogically, personally to our teaching and scholarship? Is the “x” our biggest issue? Chair: Thania Muñoz Davas, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Presenters: Mark D. Fitzsimmons, Indiana University, Bloomington; Hector Luis Alamo, Mano Magazine; Tanya Diaz-Kozlowski, Clark Colllege; Aaron Sanchez, ComentaryandCuentos.com

In addition to organizing these panels, the major effort of the year went into awarding all four of the section awards: best book, best dissertation, best article and public intellectual. Although normally only two awards are given per year, we decided to award all four for two reasons.

First, no section awards were presented in the 2019-2020 year.

Second, there was no need to reserve funds for a reception as the congress was virtual. As such, at our annual business meeting on Thursday 5/27 at 7-8:45 p.m. we presented and celebrated the following awards:

1) LSS Dissertation Award

“Constructing Mexican Atlanta, 1980-2016” Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History Emory University *** LSS Dissertation Award - Honorable Mention “Uttering Sonic Dominicanidad: Women and Queer Performers of Música Urbana” Verónica Dávila Ellis Postdoctoral Fellow in Latin American and Latino/a Studies Smith College

2) Outstanding Book Award

Abstract Barrios: The Crises of Latinx Visibility in Cities. Duke University Press, 2020 Johana Londoño Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Dept. of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies University at Albany, SUNY *** Outstanding Book Award - Honorable Mentions Archiving an Epidemic: Art, AIDS, and the Queer Chicanx Avant-Garde. NYU Press, 2019 Robb Hernández Associate Professor of English Fordham University ***Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence and Resistance in Puerto Rico. University of California Press, 2019. Marisol LeBrón Assistant Professor Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin

3) Outstanding Article Award

"Latinos in Kansas City: The Political Economy of Placemaking". Journal of Planning Literature 22 (3): 207–28. Clara E Irazábal Zurita Director, Urban Studies and Planning Program Professor, Urban Studies and Planning Program Affiliate, National Center for Smart Growth School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation University of Maryland and Alejandro N. Garay-Huaman Department of Economics University of Missouri–Kansas City,

4) 2021 Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award

Dr. Lourdes Torres, Vincent de Paul Professor of Latin American Studies and Latino Studies at DePaul University and Dr. Lorgia Garcia Peña Roy G. Clouse Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of History and Literature, Harvard University

Another major function of the annual business meeting, attended by 15-20 members, was to introduce the new board who were elected in September 2020. They are:

Co-chairs

Maia Gil'Adí, PhD (she/her/ella) Assistant Professor of English and Latinx Literature University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Jessica Retis, PhD. (she/her/ella) Professor. University of Arizona, School of Journalism.

Secretary / Treasurer

Gretchen Selcke, Ph.D.Vanderbilt University. Latino and Latina Studies Program, Director

Graduate Student Representative

Eric Macias (he/his). PhD Candidate Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies. University at Albany (SUNY)

The new board introduced some of their plans for the 2021-2022 year including organizing some pre-congress panels throughout the year on publishing and other topics, in addition to organizing the sponsored panels for LASA 2022 which will be held in San Francisco and holding elections for future leadership.

The LASA Sections Annual Report, 2019-2020 Latino Studies Section

Submitted by, Melissa Castillo Planas and Thania Muñoz Davaslioglu, Co-Chairs.

COVID-19 greatly affected our section and its plans for 2019-2020. There was no business meeting as it got cancelled due to the pandemic and no sponsored panels were presented at LASA 2020 due to participant withdrawals. Likewise, there were no awards last year due to these unprecedented circumstances. We hope we can hold a virtual business meeting for LASA 2021.

Moving forward, these are areas we hope to address virtually. We have three virtual panels planned for LASA 2021, one on Afro-Latinidades, one on the term Latinx, and one on scholarship across the Americas in COVID times. We have submitted these panels for the upcoming conference.

We also plan to award all four prizes for the Latino Studies Section this year: LASA-Latino Section Outstanding Book Award, Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award, Best Article Award, and Best Dissertation Award.

Lastly, we held elections in September 2020. Each position entails a two-year commitment, but is structured to allow for a first year of apprenticeship with current leaders and a second year of active service in the section. Candidates for the positions were invited to nominate a candidate and/or self-nominate. These are the names of the incoming board:

Co-chairs

Jessica Retis, PhD. Associate Professor. University of Arizona, School of Journalism. Maia Gil'Adí, PhD (she/her/ella) Assistant Professor of English and Latinx Literature University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Secretary / Treasurer

Gretchen Selcke, Ph.D.Vanderbilt University. Latino and Latina Studies Program, Director

Graduate Student Representative

Eric Macias (he/his). PhD Candidate Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies. University at Albany (SUNY)

The members of the current board are:

Co-chairs

Melissa Castillo Planas (English, Lehman College of the City University of New York)

Thania Muñoz D. (Spanish, Latin American literature and Latinx studies, The University of Maryland, Baltimore County)

Secretary/Treasurer:

Inmaculada Lara-Bonilla (Latin American/Caribbean Studies Unit in the Humanities Department, Hostos Community College, The City University of New York)

Graduate Student:

Ramón Luciano Capellán (Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, State University of New York at Albany) October, 2020.

The LASA-Latina/o Studies 2018-2019, Section Annual Report

1. A summary of the business meeting including the number of people that attended, topics discussed and conclusions.

About 18 people attended the Section meeting. The agenda included: announcing and celebrating the award winners, collecting suggestions for next year’s section-sponsored panels/roundtables, and whether to change the name of the section to the Latinx Studies Section or the Latina/o/x Studies Section or keep it as the Latina/o Studies Section. In terms of the name change, we decided this was a decision that needed to be voted on by all the section’s members.

2. The results of the Section’s elections, including the names, position, email, affiliation, and term. The officers who continue must also be listed with their corresponding email and term.

Outgoing Positions (2017-2019)

Co-Chairs: Johana Londoño (Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies, SUNY Albany)

Jennifer Harford Vargas (English, Bryn Mawr College)  

Secretary/Treasurer: Rebeca Hey-Colon (Spanish, Temple University)  

Graduate Student: None  

Incoming Positions (2019-2021)

Co-Chairs: Veronica Montes (Sociology, Bryn Mawr College)

Sarah Margarita Quesada (English, Notre Dame University)  

Secretary/Treasurer: Sharina Maillo-Pozo (Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, SUNY New Paltz)

  Graduate Student: Wilfredo Burgos Matos (Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures, The Graduate Center CUNY)  

Newly Elected Positions (2020-2022)  

Co-Chairs: Melissa Castillo Planas (English, Lehman College of the City University of New York)

Thania Muñoz D. (Spanish, Latin American literature and Latinx studies, The University of Maryland, Baltimore County)  

Secretary/Treasurer: Inmaculada Lara-Bonilla (Latin American/Caribbean Studies Unit in the Humanities Department, Hostos Community College, The City University of New York)  

Graduate Student: Ramón Luciano Capellán (Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, State University of New York at Albany)  

3. A review of the activities and plans for the coming term.

This year we sponsored 4 roundtables at the annual conference. We opted for roundtables so that more scholars could share their work and so that we could have a more robust set of conversations since the roundtable format allowed more time for dialogue. The titles of these roundtables were: “Anzaldúa and the Latinx World: 32 Years After Borderlands,” “‘Illegal’ and Not Undocumented: Life under the Trump Administration,” “Latina/o/x New England,” and “The Latinx ‘Other’.” Next year we will be sponsoring 3 panels or roundtables at the national conference. We also created a table for newly published books in the field of Latina/o studies at our reception, and we hope to continue that tradition next year. 

4. The names of the Section’s grantees. The names of the selection committee members and a description of the selection process. The following information should be included for the awardees:

• Section name

• Prize name 

• Prize category 

• Awardee

• Institution 

• Awarded paper/Book title  

The Latina/o Studies Section has four awards and each year grants two awards. This year we granted the outstanding book award and the Frank Bonilla public intellectual award.   

Outstanding Book Award:

We selected one winner and two honorable mentions. They are as follows:

• Forms of Dictatorship: Power, Narrative, and Authoritarianism in the Latina/o Novel (winner) by Jennifer Harford Vargas (Associate Professor of English, Bryn Mawr College)

• Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production (honorable mention) by Leticia Alvarado (Assistant Professor of American Studies, Brown University)

• Diversión: Play and Popular Culture in Cuban America (honorable mention) by Albert Sergio Laguna (Assistant Professor of American Studies, Yale University)

The committee consisted of three external members who read all of the books submitted for the prize and was overseen by in-coming co-chair Verónica Montes. Veronica collected the votes of the three external readers and drafted the award letter. The prize consisted of $250. The three external readers were:

• Dara Goldman, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Illinois, Urbana, Champaign

• Erika Busse, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Macalester College

• Maia Gil'Adi, Assistant Professor of English, George Washington University  

Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award:

We selected one winner: Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University.

The committee consisted of three external readers who read all of the nomination materials submitted for the prize and was overseen by in-coming co-chair Sarah Quesada. Sarah collected the votes of the three external readers and drafted the award letter. The prize consisted of $250. The three external readers were: 

• Inés Hernández-Avila, Professor, Department of Native American Studies University of California, Davis

• Nadia Flores, Associate Professor of Sociology, Texas Technical University 

• Inmaculada Lara Bonilla, Assistant Professor of U.S. Latina/o Studies, Hostos Community College  

Graduate Student Travel Award:  

We provided a $250 travel award to two graduate students. Johana Londoño, Jennifer Harford Vargas, and Rebeca Hey-Colón read the applications and made the award decision.  The awardees were:

• Tamara Lee Mitchell, Indiana University

• Arinka Arline Abad, SUNY Albany