Elena Machado Sáez Presents “Archival Activism in US Latinx Theatre”

Join the UNC Latina/o Studies program as we host Dr. Elena Machado Sáez on February 28th from 4:00-5:30 via Zoom! Dr. Machado Sáez will be giving a talk titled “Archival Activism in US Latinx Theatre.” Make sure to register in order to receive the Zoom link!

ABSTRACT

By situating archival work as a form of activism, we can appreciate how US Latinx playwrights are responding to a problem of generational discontinuity, to the gaps in community knowledge about US Latinx history and activism. Archival activism finds expression through representation (narrative, visual, sound, and prop elements of a performance) and institutional practices that create new spaces for community building and belonging (oral history projects, educational programming, and social media). US Latinx theatre archives a history of US Latinx activism while also opening up the definition of activism to include Other models and voices. This presentation will highlight the institutions of Borderlands Theatre in Dallas, Texas and Cara Mia Theater in Tuscon, Arizona, as well as analyze Guadalis del Carmen’s pandemic play, “Mami’s Recipe Book” (2020).

BIO

Elena Machado Sáez is a Professor of English at Bucknell University and John P. Crozer Chair of English Literature. She is currently in residence as a fellow at the National Humanities Center for the 2022-2023 academic year. She has published several essays about Lin-Manuel Miranda, is author of Market Aesthetics: The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction (University of Virginia Press 2015), and coauthor of The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature (Palgrave Macmillan 2007). Her most recent publication, “Hype it Up: US Latinx Theater on TikTok,” appears in TikTok Cultures in the United States (2022), edited by Trevor Buffone.