Critical Masculinities Colloquium: Reorientations & Futurities
The symposium is shaped by ongoing academic and public discussions on the issue of futurity, as exemplified by queer futurity, Afrofuturism, and Hillary Clinton’s resurfacing of the 1970s feminist phrase, “the future is female,” in her presidential campaign. The symposium seeks to foster an open discussion on even the possibility of a future for (critical) masculinities, especially given the toxicity of masculinity that the #metoo movement has exposed.
The invited speakers include T. Jackie Cuevas, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research focuses on questions of gender and sexuality in Latina/o literature. Her most recent publication, Post-Borderlandia: Chicana Literature and Gender Variant Critique, includes a chapter on Chicana masculinity. Our other invited speaker, South Texas writer Joe Jimenez, is the author of The Possibilities of Mud (Kórima 2014) and Bloodline, a young adult novel (Arte Público 2016). Jiménez is the recipient of the 2016 Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Press Poetry Prize and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. His creative work focuses in part on navigating queer desire in the hyper-masculine space of Chicana/o communities.
Symposium
The symposium will take place on Tuesday, June 5th, and includes a keynote address by T. Jackie Cuevas, Associate Professor, English Department, the University of Texas at San Antonio (now at the University of Texas at Austin). The symposium includes special guest Roberto Hernandez, Assistant Professor at San Diego State University, who will extend the discussion vis-à-vis decolonial theory, social movements, and relational race/ethnicity studies. He is a co-founder of the Decolonial Knowledge and Power Summer Institute held yearly in Barcelona, Spain. The event will be capped off by a poetry reading and open mike with undergraduate students led by Joe Jimenez
Round Table Discussion
A roundtable that includes both featured speakers, UCSB faculty, as well as special guests: T. Jackie Cuevas (English Faculty now at the University of Texas at Austin), Joe Jiménez (Featured Poet), Roberto Hernandez (Chicanx Studies Faculty, San Diego State University), Jennifer Tyburczy (Feminist Studies Faculty, UC Santa Barbara), and Edwina Barvosa (Feminist Studies Faculty, UC Santa Barbara)
Keynote Address
T. Jackie Cuevas (now at the University of Texas at Austin) focuses on questions of gender and sexuality in Latina/o literature. She is the author of Post-Borderlandia: Chicana Literature and Gender Variant Critique (Rutgers UP, 2018). Cuevas is also a creative writer and member of the Macondo Writer's Workshop Collective founded by author Sandra Cisneros.
Featured Poet
Joe Jiménez is the author of The Possibilities of Mud (Kórima Press 2014) and Bloodline (Arte Público Press 2016). Jiménez is the recipient of the 2016 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Poetry Prize. The short film "El Abuelo," based on Jiménez's poem, has been screened in eight countries.
