***Due to COVID-19 This Event Has Been Rescheduled for Fall 2020***

Click here to visit our page for the Fall 2020 Symposium.

Call for Papers

The UNC Latina/o Studies Program Graduate Symposium

March 17, 2020, 4PM-6PM, Greenlaw Hall 223 (Donovan Lounge)

UNC Chapel Hill, NC

 “Health, the Environment, and the Latinx Experience”

The UNC-CH Latina/o Studies Program will host its second annual graduate student symposium this spring, and we invite UNC-CH graduate students working on Latinx-related content from any discipline to submit abstracts for consideration.

As we look toward an uncertain future — with environmental crises that include rising sea levels, massive wildfires, loss of species and ecosystems, and increased water, air, and land pollution — our engagement with the forces that impact the physical and mental health of Latinx people, and their responses to such transformations, becomes increasingly important. In Losing Miami, Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué uses this quintessential Cuban American city as a metaphor for Latinx populations as he carries out “a bilingual experiment in grieving the potential sinking of Miami due to climate change and rising sea levels.” Losing Miami, then, maps the relationship between the violence of natural disasters (or other physical traumas) and the emotional and psychological aftermath that such disasters can have. In this particular case, Ojeda-Sagué anticipates the ways that these natural disasters and traumas can impact mental health ahead of their arrival. Moreover, his work centralizes Latinx people vis-a-vis environmental and disability studies, for example.

For this symposium, we take Ojeda-Sagué’s lead when he asks, “What are we losing if we lose Miami, a seemingly impossible city formed out of Caribbean migration and the transformation of language?” His book urges us to consider how climate change and other environmental forces are central to contemporary Latinx experiences and whether forced migrations or traumas not only impact individuals but transform entire cultures. What happens to the histories, cultural practices, social relationships, architecture, labor, arts, and languages of the displaced as they sink along with the city? How do these losses and displacements impact the lives of Latinx people? How do we/they recover what is lost? How do discourses change when we consider especially vulnerable indigenous Latinx, and Afro-Latinx Caribbean populations in relation to these questions?

We are especially interested in (interdisciplinary) work that explores the relationship between Latinx identity, culture, history, labor, and migration in relation to the environment, climate change, illness, and disability. Sub-topics addressing mental health, public policy, city planning, and medical care are welcome. Furthermore, scholarship that creates a dialogue between the domestic and transnational, by focusing on any geographical location relevant to Latina/o Studies and US-based Latinx experiences, is encouraged.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words and a short bio to gramirez@live.unc.edu and vidalia@email.unc.edu by Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 5PM for consideration. Include “LSP symposium abstract” in the subject line. Presenters will be allotted 15 minutes each for their presentations.

Abstract submissions should address the above and other related questions. Additional related topics or areas of interest related to Latinx studies may include:

• Environmental Racism
• Agricultural Labor
• Environmental Activism
• Reproductive Justice
• Crip Theory
• Feminist Crip Theory
• Travel Narratives
• Science Fiction genres
• Eco-poetics
• Medical Humanities
• Nature and Science Writing
• Climate-Fiction (Cli-Fi)