The graduate students of the Department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies present their 2017 Conference:
Beyond the Right Turn: Narrating Resistance
October 21-22, 2017
Thea’s Lounge, Thea Koerner House
Keynote speakers: Elsa Drucaroff and Raul Gatica
Event Program:
Saturday October 21st, 2017
9h00-9h15 Registration, check-in and breakfast.
9h15-9h30 Welcome and opening remarks. Sponsor acknowledgments.
9h30-11h15
Panel 1 Genders and Resistance.
Chair: Dr. Alessandra Santos
Nayid Contreras: «LGBTQ+ Latino Communities in the U.S. and Canada: A Return to Activism to Defend Civil Liberties under Trump’s Administration» (UBC)
Xana Menéndez Pelayo: «Frida Kahlo: la intimidad como reclamo turístico» (UBC) Marcos Moscoso: «Mujer y Amazonía en el tiempo de la extracción del caucho» (UBC) José Ricardo García Martínez: «Paradojas de la emancipación: la representación del travesti en “La Jota de Bergerac” de Carlos Velázquez» (UBC)
11h15-11h30 Coffee break
11h30-12h30
Keynote lecture: Raúl Gatica (Independent Activist)
Invisibles and Disposables: Resistance Beyond the Borders.
How does one articulate resistance beyond the borders as a temporary resident, an exile an undocumented migrant, and even as a tourist or student? As some of us have suggested, apartheid and new kinds of slavery are emerging in Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP)/The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SWAP). Building on my own short stories, poems and plays, this lecture will discuss the continued struggles of Mexican and Central American farm workers to bring attention to their plight in Canada. At the same time, it will inquire into why so few Canadians are aware of the real price of their demand for local and organic produce.
12h30-1h30 Lunch break
1h30-2h50
Panel 2 Post-Colonialisms and Resistance.
Chair: Gloria Onyeoziri-Miller
Elpida Karmali Voulgaropoulou: «The Unconventional Immigrant Narrative in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah» (University of Guelph)
Giulia Vallacqua: «Hadriana dans tous mes rêves: le réel merveilleux engagé pour une symbolique décoloniale haïtienne» (University of Guelph)
Enrica Cominetti: «Female Autofiction and Postcolonial Resistance in Marie Cardinal’s Au pays de mes racines and Marguerite Duras’s L’amant» (University of Guelph)
2h50-3h00 Coffee Break
3h00-4h15
Keynote lecture: Dr. Elsa Drucaroff (University of Buenos Aires)
Market and Resistant Criticism: A Problematic Yet Unavoidable Relationship.
Is the market a demon which ought to be ignored by the critics? Is it possible to exist and read out of the market? Is the market a place where we can decide to go in or out? Or is it rather a pervasive climate of inter-subjective relations which connect people in this capitalist society? Are critics doomed to respect the market? Can we, resistant critics, resist it? In which ways and why can we do it? What is our social responsibility when increasing the number of sensitive and critical readers? Is our position on the market related to this goal? This lecture will examine some contributions of Marxist theory, the Frankfurt School and Mikhail Bakhtin’s thought in an attempt to offer some possible answers.
4h15-4.30 Coffee Break
4h30-6h00
Documentary
Sarama’s This Living Salish Sea (2017)
We will watch a recently released documentary on the Salish Sea and its First Nations diverse communities, who “stand together in resistance to inappropriate industrial development that affects the local environment and threatens the livability of future generations on the planet”. We will discuss this documentary with the film’s director, Sarama, a local filmmaker based in Gibsons, B.C., at a round table to be held at the end of the conference. This discussion will consider current conflicts facing Northwestern indigenous communities, akin to sundry Latin American resistance struggles.
Sunday October 22nd, 2017
9h00-9h30 Breakfast
9h30-11h15
Panel 3 Identities and Resistance.
Chair: Dr. Anna Casas
Giulia Cortiana:«I need Spain-Italia Much More: cuando los estereotipos funcionan» (UBC)
Camilo Monje: «La marca del Zorro» (UBC)
Magali Blanc: «La résistance pérecquienne» (UBC)
Luis Avilés: «Nahuatl-Spanish Bilingual Speakers Vowel Dispersion» (UCLA)
11h15-11h30 Coffee Break
11h30-1h15
Panel 4 Communities and Resistance.
Chair: Dr. Raúl Álvarez-Moreno
Karen O’Regan: «Deseo y metamorfosis: la comunidad inesencial en De dónde son los cantantes (1967) de Severo Sarduy» (UBC)
Gianluca Oluic: «Resisting the Antichrist: the figure of the Katechon in Juan Donoso Cortés and Jaime Balmes» (UBC)
Liliana Castañeda: «Benkos Bio…who? la construcción literaria del sujeto político negro personificada en la figura de Benkos Biohó, héroe cimarrón, en Changó, el gran putas (1983) y La ceiba de la memoria» (2007) (UBC)
Xavier Villacreses: «El lugar de la antropogafia en El entenado de Juan José Saer» (UBC)
1h15–1h30 Break
1h30-2h30
Lunch and Guitar Concert: Kin Balam (South and Central American Indigenous Music)
We will listen to the wonderful guitar player Kin Balam, who is from the Indigenous lands of Kuxkatan, El Salvador. Born in the heart of a people’s revolution, Balam is a virtuoso Flamenco Afro Latin guitar player who will perform South and Central American Indigenous music while rapping hardcore poetry inspired by political issues.
2h30-4h15
Panel 5 Politics and Resistance.
Chair: Dr. Jon Beasley-Murray
Callie Ward: «Storytelling as Resistance: U.S.-Mexico Border Security in Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends» (Stanford University)
Fabricio Tocco: «Resisting the Post-Dictatorial State: Ricardo Piglia’s Plata quemada (1997) and the Foucaldian notion of State Phobia» (UBC)
Niall Man: «On the Dictatorship of the Dick, or Simon contra Lacan» (UBC)
Juan Felipe Hernández: «Bolivian Mining Writers: Lines of Narrative, Representation and Politics» (UBC)
4h15-4h30 Coffee Break
4h30-5h30
Round Table: Sarama, Vivaldi and Gatica Indigenous Resistance Across the Americas: From the Pacific Northwest to Patagonia by way of Oaxaca.
Chair: Dr. David Gaertner.
The following round table will focus on current struggles by First Nations peoples across the Americas. The discussion will examine three cases: the Canadian filmmaker Sarama will talk about his experience filming his documentary This Salish Sea (2017), which explores the living treasures of the Salish Sea and the powerful undercurrents of the Salish people’s resistance to the corporate fossil fuel agenda that threatens it. Dr. Ana Vivaldi, from the department of Sociology, will deal with recent conflicts taking place in Cushamen, Chubut, Argentina, where the state a demonstration against the eviction of the Mapuche people from their traditional land, purchased by the Italian clothing multinational Benetton, lead to the disappearance of Santiago Maldonado, an Argentine activist who has been missing ever since. Raúl Gatica will share his experience working closely with the «Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca» and the «Concejo Indígena de Gobierno» which chose the Nahua human rights activist Marichuy to run for the Presidency of Mexico in the general elections in 2018.
5h30-6h00 Closing remarks