Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1942-2004) is a major figure in many inter-disciplines, disciplinary areas of scholarship and art. She was born in the U.S., in the Rio Grande Valley at the border of Texas and Mexico into a family that had been in the U.S. for six generations, and died in Santa Cruz, California. Anzaldúa contributed foundational works to Chicana/o/x cultural theory, feminist theory and queer theory.

May 16-17, 2019

University of Paris VIII, Paris, France

Argument

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1942-2004) is a major figure in many inter-disciplines, disciplinary areas of scholarship and art. She was born in the U.S., in the Rio Grande Valley at the border of Texas and Mexico into a family that had been in the U.S. for six generations, and died in Santa Cruz, California. Anzaldúa contributed foundational works to Chicana/o/x cultural theory, feminist theory and queer theory. She is one of the first - if not actually the first - to construct queer theory within the academy in the 1980s. She co-edited the ground-breaking book on women and queers of color feminism, This Bridge Called My Back. Anzaldúa is a major writer of literary essays, poetry, short stories and children’s books. Her illustrations have been the subject of art exhibits. Her most renowned sole-authored book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, has been translated into multiple languages and is currently being translated into French. It is a multi-genres book including auto-biography, autohistoria, autohistoria-teoria, political essays, literary musings, and poetry. In it, Anzaldúa performs the process of decolonizing language by shifting from English (the main language of the book) into Tex-Mex Spanish and into Náhuatl, an indigenous language, to create what she called an “infant language, this bastard language, Chicano Spanish” which is “not approved by any society.”

This conference honors both the thirty year anniversary of Borderlands/La Frontera: La New Mestiza and its forthcoming translation into French. The main unifying thematic is the question of B/borders as conceptualized by Anzaldúa, and its multiple situated potential interpretations and elaborations. For Anzaldúa borderlands with a small b signals the geographical space of national division, such as the space of her birth at the U.S.-Mexico border. When she writes Borderlands with a capital B the concept-term signifies many other dimensions including psychic, sexual, spiritual, energetic divided spatialities as well. In sum, together the notions of borderlands and Borderlands up a world of possibilities for feminist and queer theory, literatures, historiographies, arts, which are invited to converge in this conference.

Submission Modality

To submit a paper abstract for presentation at the conference please include the proposed title, a 150 words maximum summary of your talk, and a four sentence bio-blurb. To submit a panel abstract please include an overall title and summary of the panel of 150 words maximum, titles and a 150 words maximum summary for each presentation, and four sentence bio-blurbs for all presenters. To submit art, please send a photocopy of what you have in mind plus a short written explanation and description, and a bio-blurb for the artist. To submit a performance, please send a description of the performance and bio-blurbs for all performers.

Please send all materials to the email address below prior to December 1, 2018.

Email: conferenceanzaldua2019@gmail.com

Organization

Co-organized by University of Paris VIII (France), University of Paris VII (France), University of California, Berkeley (USA), Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa (USA), University of Texas, San Antonio (USA), and Universidad de Guadalajara (Mexico).