Critical Disaster Studies in Latin American and Caribbean Literature
Description
Our world is increasingly defined by the impact of disasters, but the specific terms of how we understand these events have varied over time and have often been framed by scientific, economic, or political discourses. Broadly defined, Critical Disasters Studies (CDS) emphasizes that disasters are not merely natural events. As Andy Horowitz and Jacob Remes have argued “disaster, as a concept, is not just made in policy and politics; it is also made in personal and public imaginations” (4). Storytelling has and continues to play a crucial role in shaping our perception of those phenomena. Yet, fictional accounts have been overlooked in these debates, despite their significant philosophical and ethical contributions. This is particularly true about Latin America and the Caribbean, a region prone to disaster and experiencing some of the worst impacts globally.
This panel approaches CDS not merely as a subject matter, but as a lens through which to explore literature’s unique capacity to bear witness, process trauma, and critique power structures. Building upon Carlos Fonseca Suárez’s The Literature of Catastrophe (2020), this seminar seeks to highlight that catastrophes, as socially and historically constructed phenomena, are deeply intertwined with power relations and the formation of political systems in the region. We seek to foster an interdisciplinary and comparative dialogue about the rich body of literature from Latin America and the Caribbean about disasters, from massive and recognizable events such as earthquakes and hurricanes to environmental degradation and technological failures. We invite proposals that engage with how literary and cultural texts from the region interrogate, reinforce, or subvert conventional understandings of catastrophe, particularly in dialogue with CDS’ concerns with power, inequality, and historical legacies.
Possible guiding questions could include (but are not limited to):
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In what ways have Latin American and Caribbean literatures depicted disasters as outcomes of long processes of colonialism? In what ways are disasters entangled with the coloniality of power in literary representations of the region?
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How does literature from the region contribute to the collective memory of catastrophic events, and what role does it play in shaping different post-disaster identities and communities?
- “Elsewhere catastrophe” has been defined by Anna Brickhouse as the conviction that calamity primarily affects non-US regions or racialized bodies, and how it reveals the “unseeing” or “willful forgetting” of domestic cataclysms. How does Latin American and Caribbean literature challenge and dialogue with Brickhouse's “elsewhere catastrophe” narrative?
Please send an abstract of 250 words maximum by October 2nd, 2025. For any queries about the seminar, please contact the organizers, Sahai Couso Díaz ([email protected]) and Danielle Dorvil ([email protected]).
Schedule
Papers
Speaker Bio
Jessica Carey-Webb is Assistant Professor of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of New Mexico. Her book Eyes on Amazonia: Transnational Perspectives on the Rubber Boom Frontier (Vanderbilt UP, 2024) explores how race and gender shaped empire during the first rubber boom. A former Mellon/ACLS public fellow at the NRDC, she now researches ecomedia in the Amazon, focusing on environmental representation, colonial legacies, and sustainable futures in Latin America.
Speaker Bio
Lu Han is a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Studies at Cornell University. Her research focuses on 20th- and 21st-century Hispanophone Caribbean and Mexican literature and visual culture. Her dissertation focuses on alternative perspectives of space exploration in Latin(x) American speculative fiction and arts. This project emphasizes non-Western notions of temporality, ecology, and the human, while highlighting how space ambitions create complex dynamics of postcolonial modernity.
Speaker Bio
Danielle M. Dorvil is Assistant Professor of Spanish Language and Literature at Sarah Lawrence College. Her research and teaching interests include Afro-Latin American and Caribbean women’s literatures and intellectual histories from the nineteenth century onward. Her scholarly works have appeared in A Contracorriente, The Journal of Haitian Studies, and Latin American Literary Review.
Papers
Speaker Bio
Cornel Bogle is an assistant professor of English at Simon Fraser University. His research focuses on Caribbean literatures, cultures, and diasporas. His recent scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, the Routledge Handbook of Caribbean Studies, and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Poetry, Gender, and Sexuality.
Speaker Bio
Alexandra Rahr is Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. Her research focus is on narratives of natural disaster and she's taught classes on populism, epidemic cultures and monument take-downs, among many others. She's a co-founder of a Doctoral Cluster in Environmental Humanities with the Universities of Ocford and Pennsylvania, and recently finished a term as the Munk School's Director of Undergraduate Programs and Experience.
Speaker Bio
Sahai Couso Díaz is an Assistant Professor at Kenyon College. She received her joint Ph.D. in Spanish studies and comparative media analysis and practice from Vanderbilt University in 2023. She previously held a visiting position at Williams College and the University of Havana. Her essays have appeared in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Chasqui, and Confluencia.