Thinking Through/With Dance in Latin American and Iberian Cultural Studies
Description
The medium of dance has been overlooked by Latin Americanists and Hispanists. Many scholars working in these fields have contributed to redefine the field of Hispanism as an “expanded field” (Krauss, 1979) through their commitment to bringing new objects or topics of study excluded from the canon and new methods of critical analysis to this field, thereby radically redefining and opening what was a highly traditional discipline. Yet, dance remains largely marginalized. It has been traditionally the ephemerality or non-reproducibility of dance that has been seen as the obstacle to being considered a legitimate object of research. In this seminar, we aim to explore how theory can be inscribed in or derived from dance/embodied practices. The latter do not function as instantiations of theory. Instead, we “think through/with” rather than “think about” dance/embodied practices. Therefore, we “think through/with” dance/embodied practices to propose that theoretical thinking functions less as a “master discourse” than as an “available discourse” that enables us to articulate the creative process underpinning dance/embodied practices, and dance/embodied practices simultaneously function as a source of conceptual/theoretical inspiration. We understand dance/embodied practices as theoretical texts themselves. Conceptualizing dance/embodied practices as “theoretical texts” enables us to articulate and reformulate wider conceptual concerns, thus engaging with theoretical questions relating more directly to dance, but that can also be very useful for thinking theoretically and in a transdisciplinary manner about other cultural practices.
To explore and reflect on the specificity and transdisciplinary nature of dance in Latin American and Iberian cultural studies, we welcome proposals for papers (200-250 words) on the following and all related topics: the intersection of dance with cinema, theater, literature, or visual culture; the intersection of critical dance studies with the fields of philosophy, history, psychoanalysis, politics, aesthetics, ethics, feminist, or queer theory. We welcome papers that foreground the imbrication of creative experimentation and theoretical reflection. This seminar particularly welcomes papers that embrace an expansive definition of dance in relation to other cultural practices or displace the choreographic element of the performative event to other places (ie the cinematic camera or the kinesthetic responses on the part of readers/spectators). This seminar also invites papers that explore how the material and discursive conditions of the body and embodiment figure in (re)presentation, the bodily and somatic conditions of writing, or the potential or the failure of language to account for bodily and somatic experiences. For further information contact: Miguel Caballero ([email protected]) and Julian Gutierrez ([email protected])
Schedule
Papers
Speaker Bio
Sherry Velasco is Professor of early modern Spanish literature in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures and the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at USC. She is the author of four monographs, including Lesbians in Early Modern Spain and The Lieutenant Nun: Transgenderism, Lesbian Desire, and Catalina de Erauso, among others. Her current project is: Listening in the Age of Cervantes: Moriscas and Gendered Sound from Spain to Algiers.
Speaker Bio
Victoria Fortuna is Associate Professor in the Dance Department at Reed College. Her book, Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence, and Memory in Buenos Aires, examines the relationship between Buenos Aires based contemporary dance practices and histories of political and economic violence in Argentina from the mid-1960s to the mid-2010s. She is currently working on a project that examines the relationship between concert dance and the construction of race in Argentina during the 20th century.
Speaker Bio
Sandra Baena is a PhD student at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University. Sandra holds a B.A in English Studies and an M.A in Literary and Cultural Studies from Universidad de Sevilla. Their current research focuses on the cultural, artistic, and political transatlantic connections between Spain and the Southern Cone in post-dictatorial periods. They are also interested in examining how performing arts and movement practices allow for political counter-narratives.
Papers
Speaker Bio
Leigh Mercer is Associate Professor of Spanish and Affiliate Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at The University of Washington. Her research focuses on the modern and contemporary Spanish novel, early Spanish film, tourism, and Catalan identity. She is the author of Urbanism and Urbanity: The Spanish Bourgeois Novel and Contemporary Customs (1845-1925) and is presently completing a book manuscript on technological display and technophobia in Spain’s earliest film productions.
Speaker Bio
Miguel Caballero is Assistant Professor of Iberian Studies at Northwestern University. His research focuses on two main areas: (1) avant-garde art and literature. He is the author of The Monument of Tomorrow: Creative Conservation and the Spanish War (PSUP 2025); (2) medical humanities, specifically HIV/AIDS studies. He is currently working on a book that explores HIV art and critical theory, with a particular attention to the logic of HIV chronification and prevention.
Papers
Speaker Bio
Julian Gutierrez-Albilla is Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Comparative Literature, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Aesthetics, Ethics, and Trauma in the Cinema of Pedro Almodovar (2017) and the translator of the first book by the feminist artist and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger into Spanish: Proto-ética matricial. Ensayos filosóficos sobre el arte y el psicoanálisis (2019).
Speaker Bio
Robert A. Myak earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2023 and is currently a Lecturer of Spanish at Binghamton University. He researches Iberian cultural production of the twentieth century, with particular attention to poetry, exile, humor, and famine in the first twenty-five years of the Franco dictatorship. His recent work examines the late poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez and the politics of his posthumous repatriation from Puerto Rico to Spain.