The Latinx Project’s Graduate Student Working Group Symposium
Perspectives on Aesthetics, Sexuality, and Geography
RSVP Link: https://forms.gle/VmPWQFscy6JZVHcM8
Please join The Latinx Project Graduate Student Working Group (GSWG) on March 20 for our first annual symposium at New York University. Inspired by a set of topics salient to the inquiries of Latinx studies, queer studies, and critical feminist geography, our symposium sought contributions speaking to the growing creative tradition of women of color feminist and Black feminist writing on racialized and queer genders and sexualities, aesthetics, embodiments, and geographies.
“Perspectives on Aesthetics, Sexuality, and Geography” features eight graduate students who will bring us to the Darién Gap, Desierto Sonoro, volcanic poetics, blue FEMA tarps, and other creative and political sites that will animate discussions of place-making, memory, disability, embodiment, survival, Black women’s labor, and refusal. Our symposium will take place in-person on March 20, 2025 from 9AM-2 PM.
Symposium Schedule | 20 Cooper Square Room 101
Breakfast (Open to all)
9:00 AM - 9:30 AM
Welcome by Daisy Quiñones and Orlando Ochoa
9:15 AM - 9:30 AM
Keynote: Dalila Sanabria (2024-2025 Artist-in-Residence for The Latinx Project)
9:30 AM - 9:45 AM
Panel I: Transformative Bodies
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Graduate Student Moderator: Daisy Quiñones
Panelists:
Elicie Edmond (NYU), “Venus as Janie: The Sensual (Re)production of the Bwa Kayiman Ceremony in Their Eyes Were Watching God”
João Victor Azevedo (NYU), “Engaging the Body Through Parangolés (1964–1965): Hélio Oiticica and The Political Transformation of Art”
Daniel J. Vázquez Sanabria (UT Austin), “More-Than-Human Aesthetics: Disability in Contemporary Puerto Rican Arts and Performance”
Panel II: Makings in Migration
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM
Graduate Student Moderator: Miriam Juárez
Panelists:
Adriana Díaz-Mayens (NYU), “Por dignidad e identificacion puertorriqena: Anticolonialism in the Works of Pura Belpre”
Gloria D’Alessio (Rutgers University), “The place-making of a migrant corridor: performance and surveillance in the Darien Gap”
Lunch
12:00 PM - 12:45 PM
Open to all
Panel III: Ruptures and Recovery: Approaches to the Archive
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Graduate Student Moderator: Orlando Ochoa
Panelists:
Estefania Vallejo Santiago (Florida State University), “Pressing Memory, Ironing Histories: Black Women’s Labor and Refusal in Damaris Cruz’s Las Planchadoras (2014)”
Beatriz Yanes Martinez (NYU), “Volcanic Eruptions: Archival and Geopoetic Refusals”
Closing Remarks by the Conference Organizing Committee
1:45 PM - 2:00 PM
About GSWG
The Graduate Student Working Group at The Latinx Project fosters a collaborative environment for networking, professional development, and community. GSWG is open to graduate students at NYU, area institutions, and independent scholars looking for community. Please join us for our upcoming events and subscribe to our mailing list to receive updates relevant to graduate students.