Description of Two-year Theme
America, Bridge Between Oceans:
Ships, Peoples, and Cultures Across the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Atlantic
Co-c0ordinator: Alai Reyes-Santos, Executive Board Member, CLLAS, & Associate Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies
Co-coordinator: Lanie Millar, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Department of Romance Languages
If we pay attention to the historical and contemporary circulations of people, cultures and commodities across the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Atlantic, how would our analytical approach to Latinx and Latin American Studies, ethnic studies and area studies, shift? If we center maritime routes and water to shape our research agendas, what new questions and possibilities emerge? How could we foster comparative frameworks that transcend the usual geographical boundaries of area studies and ethnic studies? What kind of colonial and imperial, national and transnational, histories could we tell? And, in particular, what happens when we put the Atlantic world in conversation with the Pacific? What kind of art and cultural production emerges? Which stories of struggles for racial, economic, gender and environmental justice arise? What kind of interventions into Latinx and Latin American Studies are possible from the Pacific Rim? From our location in the Pacific Northwest? How does looking at Latinx and Latin American Studies from within the Pacific Rim region open up innovative and necessary methodological and analytical horizons? These are the questions that drive a series of events in AY 2018-2019 and 2019-2020.
See also: 2018 Symposium “Justice Across Borders: Gender, Race, and Migration in the America” for details of this past event.